1. Introduction about yourself
My name is Britta Jacobs (aka mermaidine on DA).
I live in a village in the eastern part of Switzerland between the Lake of Constance and the Alpstein mountains.
I am in my mid-sixties and retired and love to create art. Creating digital art, photography, ceramics and writing are my passions.
2. Your art is so breathtaking. From how long have you been creating art?
Nearly all my life, I have started creating. Photography was my next love.
I took thousands of slides which luckily are now all digitalized. From time to time on holidays I came back to drawing. The care for my parents over 14 years took most of my time.
3. What software do you use?
I started my “digital life” in photography as soon as this was possible. Working with digital computer programs began in 2005, when my sister recommended Vue to me, a 3d landscaping program. This was what I always wanted. It opened the possibility to me to create landscapes, Sci-fi renders, surreal images and fantasy images.
I quite early started to create my 3d assets myself, be it architecture, animals, plants, sci-fi assets or everyday objects. I also learned to work with DAZ 3d, Poser, Sculptris, Zbrush,Blender, Incendia (a program for creating 3d fractals), Plantfactory. For postprocessing, I still use PaintShop Pro. I did not have the money to buy Photoshop. For special painting techniques I use also Gimp.
When Flowscape and the AI art generators like Artbreeder and Deep dream generator came, I ventured with curiosity to explore them. I tried Wombo.art, Disco diffusion, Nightcafe. My absolute favorite for the time being is MidJourney, which most of my recent work is created in. I still use postwork to fine tune what the AI is creating out of mere words.
I combine two or three different AI renders into a new image, or paint it over where something is missing.
For creating my Storybud books, I write stories with my images, which are published by book on demand. I use also word for layout and creating the needed pdf out of it for printing. There are 3 books published in bilingual English and German. The 4th and the 5th books are in the making.
4. Show us any favorite work from your portfolio. Any reason you created them?
“Deep forest magic” was the first fantasy/magical render I did in Vue which came out absolute to my liking. It also was the first to start with my storybuds. It was the base of creating my books – something friends of mine suggested I should do.
“Vintage” was created after a photo I saw somewhere, which I really liked and I wanted to recreate it. The thick tree is modeled in Sculptris and textured in Vue.
I created the bicycle by modelling it in Vue.
But it was easier for me to have only very limited possibilities for modelling and to quite a degree it still is. Friends of mine were astonished one could do something like that in Vue and told me, that to them modelling like that would be like milking mice.
The portrait of “Pan” was created combining two AI machines, Artbreeder for creating the portrait and Deep Dream Generator for creating the extraordinary texture overlay. When the portrait came to life by just playing around in Artbreeder, it looked to me already like a picture of Pan. Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs in ancient Greek religion and mythology. He is a bit a wild one and at times mischievous too. And exactly that the look of this portrait seemed to express to me. Now a simple portrait would not do, there should be a connection to nature as it befits him. So I chose a style in Deep Dream Generator which would give him the wild nature appeal.
“Nightwalk in the magical forest” is one of the first art in Midjourney, where I saw a possibility to create magic and beauty as a counterpart to all the bad and nasty which is constantly brought to us all day long. It is thought to give imagination and relaxation a place again in life too and to balance out. And apparently it is seen like this by others too, which makes me happy.
“Menhir Guardian”, created in Disco Diffusion goes in the same direction of magic, this time combined with ancient history, as a visual reminder, that there is more to the world than the constant busy buzz of all day life.
“The garden of the soul” is another one of my images created in Midjourney to give a visual possibility to relax and so I subtitled it accordingly: “Sometimes you just need a little rest. I offer you to go for a walk in my garden of the soul and let yourself unwind :)”
5. Do you use any stock images or do you paint everything from scratch?
I rarely use stock images I have to pay for, only when I have a very distinct part of a picture in mind. But I use the free images from Pixabay to combine with my renders.
“Moonchild” is an example of it. A render in Vue for the landscape and the Moonchild is combined with a cloud photo from Pixabay and brought together by blending and adding other clouds in in postwork.
6. How do you get inspired to create your art? Do you take any references from other artists?
There are many things inspiring me, for photography it is the beauty in nature, the little things along my walking way, which other would not realize and which are beautiful to look at and the light playing with the landscape or plants.
For my 3d renders it is mainly just experimenting with new objects or fractals I created and texturing them and out of this a new render is born.
Or it is a scene in a film or documentation I saw, that imprints in my mind because of its beauty and comes out as a render again.
For the AI programs it is playing around like I started with Artbreeder and suddenly seeing something in a landscape or portrait which can be further developed by combining, painting over or photo bashing. And lately with the AI machines based on words like Midjourney or Discodiffusion it is more and more the spiritual and soul nourishing part, which I feel is missing especially in our days. And yes, for the styles of an AI creation I sometimes take reference to other artists, and I also recreated paintings from other artists in 3d renders.
7. Anything else you want to share with the readers?
Just a wish, that they might be inspired or find a way to ease their mind in art or in simply walking outside in nature. I feel that this is highly needed in our time and we might find balance and rest and again the respect and affection which leads to a content and happy life for ourselves, no matter the external circumstances.
This is the main reason for me to create my art.
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