Angel of the Forest and Sea

Steven Dubrowski

Interview by L. Valena
January 21, 2023

So let's take it from the top. Please describe for me the prompt that you responded to.

Sure! It looked like it was probably a watercolor painting of a merperson with leaves and a bunch of designs on it. I loved the colors that they used. I drew my painting digitally and I used a watercolor brush. I tried two brushes in Procreate; I'm not really comfortable trying a bunch of them. It was an interesting stretch for me. And yeah, it was a very pretty painting.

How did you go from there to deciding what you wanted to paint?

I got a little too serious thinking about it. Then I decided I really liked the blue and white splash that the mermaid had on her tail, so I just started with those colors. I used basically an eyedropper tool to get the colors from that painting into mine, and just started from there, splashing colors trying to find a shape, and then I found something I liked and kept going from there.

That's cool. You were splashing colors on and seeing what landed, and then responding to that?

Yeah. I made the background blue with white to look like that splash in the mermaid tail. Then I thought, “I don't know what I want to paint,” so I just started painting in a direction to see where it would take me.

And where did it take you? Can you tell me about this beautiful creature?

It didn't have a lot of depth while I was starting it. It was just a bunch of splashes on the page and then it started to look more like a jellyfish. In the prompt, I really liked the dark ink over the watercolor, so I wanted to try and do something similar to that feel.

Jellyfish are really cool. I love them. They're just basically a floating nervous system in the ocean and that feels super cool and alien to me. I'm a floating nervous system too. [both laugh]

I was about to say that feels really relatable to me! And with unexpected electricity. And… fingers?... that come out of nowhere. They’re very mysterious creatures.

Right! Exactly. I think of that video of the jellyfish that gets stuck and spins around the little bubble that you see in the water. Someone's swimming underneath and blows a little bubble ring, and it just gets stuck and spins around it. I feel that.

I totally feel that. Isn't the ocean fascinating? We know so little about it! I feel like we’re so fixated on outer space and yet there's a whole ‘nother outer space on this planet. It’s just right there, you know?

How much of it have we not been able to even get close to exploring?

Yeah, it's crazy down there! In the deep sea, where there are really high-pressure systems. Have you ever seen this? There are snails down there that literally have iron shells.

Oh, that's so cool!

Like, what the fuck?? An animal created that? That's just how it exists?

And the ones that survive without any sort of light at all. Where did they come from? Were they born down there? We have no idea, and I don't even think we will have any idea in our lifetime.

It's pretty amazing. Is this usually how you work, placing colors and feeling your way like this? Is that usually how it goes for you?

Yeah, I can conjure up an image in my head, but then get frustrated that I can't put it down on paper exactly as I want. I find that the best way to do it is just to start putting stuff down on paper and then see what I can actually create from that. One of my favorite paintings had five or six iterations before I was actually finished with it. I knew I wanted to paint two people, and I kind of knew what it was going to look like, but not exactly. So I just start throwing things at the canvas until it spits something back that I want. “That looks nice.”

That sense of being collaborative with whatever creative force we work with seems like a very healthy way of going about it. And how much of it is even up to us? Actually, all we can do is show up.

I am the vessel, and the paint and the canvas are going to do whatever they want anyway.

Exactly. How long have you been working digitally?

It’s not my preferred medium. I like working on newsprint, the big 16x20 pieces with charcoal. So it’s probably been two or three years in total. I've done tablet stuff on computers and now I’m just working with the pen on my iPad.

What drew you to make that switch?

I can't really afford to buy all the art supplies that I want. And sometimes it's easier since I don't have to set up a whole canvas to be able to create something that looks like an acrylic painting. I wanted to learn how to animate, too. Animation is something that I'm interested in, and on Procreate you can do probably a-hundred-and-something frames of animation, depending on what the layers look like. So that's fun to learn about.

What haven’t we talked about? Is there anything else about your process that we haven't discussed yet?

I don't really think about my process too much. I just set up, I put the TV on next to me. It has to be a show that I'm sort of interested in, but not too interested, so my brain isn’t focused 100% on either thing.

What were you watching when you made this?

I've been trying to catch up on the last two seasons of BoJack Horseman. With that show and also with art, I've been trying to learn how to say, “Okay, I'll put it down. I don't have to do all six hours of this painting at once. I'll do two right now. We’ll do two episodes.” I can only really handle a therapy amount of that show and then I have to stop for a little bit. There are too many episodes that are about exactly what I was just worrying about. “Why would you have to say it right back at me?”

“Why double down on that anxiety?” Oh, I wanted to ask you about the title. Are angels a thing for you?

Well, the eyeballs are definitely an angel thing. I love the biblical eyeball angels. They're just very fun to draw and I like making spooky things. I grew up very invested in the TV show “Supernatural,” and holding onto Castiel as a character in my brain has helped me get through a lot of shit. As a recovering Christian, as my friend Mariah calls it, it's nice to be able to decide that this is what I want an angel to look like.

Yeah, I do think it's cool that the actual biblical angels are pretty freakin’ wild. We have this Hallmark card idea of angels, gold and with the harp… And no, it's really pretty gnarly.

Very scary.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

Do it! I received the email to get started and I couldn't remember when I signed up for this or where I saw it. But you know what? I'm glad I did. If you like to get involved in little projects like this, sit down and try it. My creative process is “Just do it.” It’s just art. There's no need to get so caught up in how perfect it needs to be. Just make something and be happy that you have a stack of art.

Call Number: Y95VA | Y99VA.duAnge

Steven Dubrowski: 27 year old trans freak, artist and animal lover, I have been creating art as soon as I could hold a pencil. I have and will always be an artist, in everything I do. Enjoy my first published work, @steven_creates is my instagram