PE: Interview with ^ClefairyKid

You can call me Clefairy or CK, I’ve been here with this account for about 3 or 4 years now. I started using Photoshop in high school to try and retouch photos, and that lead into Photo-manipulation.  After I got more comfortable with PS, I started branching out into a huge range of things including Digital Art, Fan Art, Pixel Art (which I’ve now become CV for), Emoticons, Artisan Crafts, Flash, Photography and so on…
I like rainbows, but I’m sure most people already know that ;D

I suppose I just wanted to get a support stamp to help promote my account in general, but was too shy/embaressed to get one made by someone else, so I just gave it a shot. I still have my first one here:

I then went on to make support stamps for a range of my favourite artists, and then it sort of grew from there.

To look at stamp design from a fresh perspective, many people don’t think about all of the parts of the stamp, just the middle, and many don’t even consider the background as important compared to their text. I like that because of their fresh perspective, pixel artists often consider all the parts, including border, teeth shape, etc, because they will often create their own stamp bases from scratch, and this brings a unique sense of style that really stands out from the usual templates.

Long story short, I can’t draw a line of validity over what is and isn’t art, no one can. So for instance, if people were to say I shouldn’t DD something because it’s too small, I would say, it’s impossible as a judgment for me to make, because everyone’s idea of small will be different. Where will that line go, who can say that art isn’t valid once it’s 100px or less? 50px? 10px? 1px? I would be willing to argue that even a single, lone pixel (and yes I’ve seen someone submit this here), can be called art, because essentially, art is the meaning attached to a symbol (be that sound, movement, colour, shape etc), and I happen to know that on that very page, hundreds and hundreds of people were commenting and THAT is what art is. It creates a reaction, whatever that reaction is, and people were therefore finding different ways of interacting with and interpreting that piece. They certainly felt like there was an idea behind it, or else there’d have been no comments, if there were nothing to comment on. 

I’d also suggest that if you think it’s so easy making your meaning in a large open space with all the tools and things at your disposal, isn’t it more of an achievement that you can manage to create that same meaning within the types of restrictions that come with Stamps? A lot of thought needs to go into a good stamp, because everything you put needs to contribute to the piece, there’s simply not much room for extra bits and pieces. I’d say a lot of people who think they aren’t art are influenced by the majority of stamps where people just type out something on a plain template and do nothing more. What I’ve been saying for a few years now is that people need to and have been in some cases, taking it further, and considering all aspects of the Stamp. It’s like saying drawings aren’t art because you’ve only seen quick, rough sketches before, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some masterpieces out there if you look for them.

Have a read of the recently rewritten Stamps for Beginners and Beyond II article, I originally wrote it to try and get people to consider stamps as more than just writing a phrase on a template, and to think about what they could do to enjoy stamps and stamp making a lot more, and it happens to be a very comprehensive guide that can really help you start out in Stamps. Also, check out stamps you like and ask yourself why those ones stand out to you over other stamps? Stamp-Kingdom is also a very good group to hang about in for resources and inspiration.

Probably journal and gallery CSS, I’ve written CSS for a lot of things, but not those, I think it’s sort of similar to Stamps in that a lot of people seem to stick really closely to the template look, but that when someone really gets out of that box, it can be amazing!

The art for inspiring me, getting me here and keeping me here, and the people for being supportive, resourceful/helpful and making the time I spend here interesting and dynamic. It’s sometimes important to remember that there’s this world where art is so valid and the majority of people are open to artistic thinking and experimentation.

HNNNNN THAT’S A TOUGH ONE.

Favourite Stamp: 

Favourite from Gallery Overall: 

And have you seen my favourites lately!? It’s packed with things that are too hard to choose from :’D

Stamps from Web5teR are a real treat

Favourite pixel art (although I love all kinds, I had to pick one haha )

Thank you for the interview, and thank you everyone who gets involved in Stamps Day, hope you all have fun and maybe learn a something new!