Rainbow's Magical Flower Salon - My First Mobile Game For Kids

First I must say how much I love playing games. I love digital (PC, mobile, X-box) and real world (tangible) games. I love hidden object games, board games, card games, puzzles, first person shooter, cooking, strategy.... yeah, I even love playing guess the shape/color or animal name games designed for babies and toddlers. If I could live of air and feed my family on 'universe juice' I'd play games at least 99% of my time. Got to admit - I'm a procrastinator to the bone ;). 

Enter science in the defense of procrastinators who love (live) to play games - YAY! There are numerous studies that positively tie gaming (of all and any kind) to creativity, imagination, problem solving, better motor skills, and so on and so forth. Here's one such article on creativity in kids. And in my own experience I strongly believe that this is valid for us grown ups as well.

There's only one thing that I love as much as playing games, and that's imagining and creating characters, worlds and stories, and bringing them to life through illustration. And when gaming and drawing combine they become game art.

Creation of the Cephalopod Mermaid

The inspiration for this piece came from cephalopods. This exclusively marine creatures with their prominent head and set of tentacles are graceful and scary at the same time, which gives them a unique beauty. 

I wanted to create a creature to capture both the beauty and creepiness of the cephalopods, and the shell-headed tentacle-haired mermaid started swimming around my brain.

This was the initial sketch:

Project: Zodiac. Ups and downs, and the faith of the 12.

Well, I started this project two years ago. That's a really (relatively) long time ago.

In my teenage days I found horoscopes to be pretty entertaining - no matter if you believe in such things or not - and since then I like to read about all the different zodiacs from different cultures. Great inspiration hides in all those mythical signs, for me anyway.

I decided that it'll be fun to tackle the 12 zodiac signs as a series of themed illustrations. And the brainstorm began! Having so much art styles and options can sometimes be overwhelming for me, and then I get excited and I go something like this: 

I'll do classic representations - animal and human form respectively... um... no, no that's boring and least challenging... hm... I know, I know art nouveau - that's awesome style, kind a vintage looking... no, no too restricting for what characters dance around my brain... all mermaids, all unicorns... no I got it CATS! No, no...

And so on and so forth, until... Who am I kidding, I'm a sucker for steampunk.

It was decided - Steampunk zodiac ladies.

Hello there!

Welcome to my art blog. My name is Irena Gladkova-Cvetkovska.  I've been doing art for my whole life but I'm finally trying to get it out there for people to see. I've just started posting here, and will be posting about my inspiration, works in progress, maybe even some tutorials here and there. You can also get to know me and get more frequent updates on Facebook and Twitter - @IrenaGladkova. I can't wait to show you the stuff I'm working on, so stay tuned and be sure to sing up my mailing list for updates!