Colors Gallery, meet KeyFeathers
@KeyFeathers is a lover of art, reptiles, birds, dragons, and all things dino! When they aren't creating amazing art KeyFeathers frequents conventions and creates art dolls! Let's get to know them even better!
What's your origin story? Who are you as an artist? When did you start?
"I pretty much started art at a pretty early age. I grew up watching some old classics like "The dark crystal, the labyrinth, watership down, and most Don Bluth films. This gave me a really keen passion for art as a whole as a kid and had me scribbling on paper from as far back as I can remember!"
Who or what inspires you? What inspires your current style? You seem to be a fan of dinosaurs, birds , reptiles, and fantasy creatures such as dragons as well. Are you a nature lover ?
"The films I mentioned above have and still are big inspirations for me. I also read a lot, and many novels such as "The dragon riders of Pern" helped grow my love for the fantasy genre in general. I am a big nature lover! I have spent many years photographing and rescuing native animals in my area, especially birds!"
Goanna by KeyFeathers
When did you discover Colors and how does it complement your workflow? Do you use any other mediums or software?
"I discovered Colors back but didn't really give it a fair go on my switch until I saw another artist use it (Twarda). I actually purchased my switch especially to use colours! And while I do not use it in my professional workflow, it is a great little program to use when I am travelling and don't wish to bring my Cintiq. I use Photoshop a lot, along with Zbrush and clay for my sculpting."
How do you feel about our humble community? Why do you use Colors? Anything you would like to see in the future feature or gallery wise?
"I love what colors has going on. I really love encouraging people to use colors, especially if they already have a switch and cant afford tools like a Cintiq. I think its a really fantastic affordable entry level "tablet" option for young artists!"
"The feature I have always wanted is a rotate function haha. I have not actually checked the updates in a while, so perhaps it already exists?..."
Habits besides making awesome art? On discord I recall that you mentioned making dolls and going to conventions? How is the con space and what have you learned from it?
"Yes, I spend a lot of my time when not holding down studio work, creating for and travelling to conventions. It's a great experience (if tiring!) And its definately helped me keep myself busy and constantly creating new things."
Nature vs Nurture? What's your opinion on artistic growth? What advice do you have for beginners and pros alike?
"I definitely believe anyone with the passion and drive can be an artist. And it is all to do with continuing to practice! Just drawing for yourself, and exploring your interests when you are a starting artist is a fantastic way to start. Art after all is supposed to be fun! Draw every day when you can, especially reference from real life to get a solid grasp of form before learning off your peers."
"It's hard not to get frustrated when you do not see instant results in your practice, especially in these days where horrible tech like AI imaging exists. The best advice I have is keep going, and try not to succumb to shortcuts if you can. Your art will grow with you in time, as you take in and process what you learn over time! Art is a life long journey."
Colors art you're most proud of?
This one!
Top 3 favorite Colors artworks?
Cart. Spinosaurus by Twarda
May 1st Squadron by Acchan
Spock & Kirk by Silvermoon-
Your preferred weapon to combat art block?
"Honestly? Just keep going! My work is my art, and I often just have to push through it. Making sure I take breaks in my down time to do other things (walking, games and reading) helps keep me sane too!"
Favorite animals? If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be?
"Definitely birds, especially owls. If I could be one for a day, I'd love to be a Barn owl."
Fancy Birb by KeyFeathers
Favorite Colors and non-Colors artist?
Colors = @Twarda
Non-Colors = Brian Froud
Discord question from @tall73: Your Deviantart account indicates you are boycotting the site due to their AI involvement. What are your views on AI, and particularly how it affects artists.
"Hi there, good question I am against "AI imaging" in it's current form for 2 reasons and I apologize as this will be a long one as it is something I am very passionate about! As a note. I will be talking about this from the perspective of a industry/working artist who has already lost some work, and has seen the issues and pressures early stage adoption of this tech has already caused."
1) Morally
"AI imaging programs, such as the like of Stable Diffusion (in my opinion, one of the most dangerous due to the hedge fund manager founders absolute lack of moral care for the people he is effecting. And its open source nature.) And Midjourney. Are for profit products (this is very important), that have been built and trained from the existing products (copywritten artworks, trademarked art, copywritten photo's, and so on) web wide without any consent from the artists or compensation for its usage. Stable diffusion for example was trained off the massive scraped dataset LaionB, which was passed off as a "research" product to avoid international concern (which is extremely dirty.) My own work was in this dataset and I had to fight for a good while to have it removed. And the distressing part is, even after being removed it is too late. The way these AI programs work is they learn off the images and text associated with it. And they do not keep the images. So the damage is done, they can not be -retrained to forget what they learnt off certain images easily."
"No artist in the time since the internet was created, uploaded their works for the world to view for free. With the intent or knowledge that it would be scraped to manufacture a artist replacement product."
"Considering these are for profit products, with the specific intent on replacing the labor and need for artists in many fields. This is a extremely dangerous mindset. Many of these "AI" imaging products and their supporters are pushing a very aggressive and effective marketing strategy. And that is the "adapt or die" mantra. This in a nutshell, is telling creatives, and consumers that their product is needed to continue to be a successful artist in any career. And without it, we will be left in the dust to AI users.
This is a very dangerous time and message we are facing right now. Because, with such aggressive marketing the true issues (misuse of artists works) is swept under the rug, in favor of the rush and excitement of playing with the shiny new instant image machine."
"This is exactly what these companies need, as they need people to widely use their products and for artists to be pushed out and replaced from their current work in favor of these cheap fast ways of producing images. This will in time, absolutely decimate entry level work in a multitude of areas. And we are already seeing this happen almost daily in advertising especially, book covers, professional graphics design (t-shirts, merch)."
"The blunt fact of the matter is. They package and sell this tech as a artists tool. But it is not a tool, their desire is to eventually sell it as a all in one refined finished product. You ask for a image, and it spits out exactly what you want with no need for edits. And this is being achieved by using the very works of the people it seeks to replace and put out of work. that combined with how fast these images can be spat out. Means honest working artists can not even compete visibly online, and we are already seeing AI accounts absolutely dominate the algorithms due to how fast this immoral content is spammed. I often see new AI accounts this year more often, and pushing numbers higher than established real artists. Its sad to see."
2) Culturally
"Art, out of everything else. Is one of the most human forms of expression we have. Art is all around us, in both pure artistic expression, to the most mundane basic objects (the packaging on our food, the chairs we sit on, the houses we live in.) Art is one of those jobs, that many of us who have the passion to learn and keep going with...WANT to do. As a artist working in the TV industry, I absolutely love my work. I get up in the morning, and feel satisfied with what I have achieved when I go to bed."
"Many of the AI supporters and creators, constantly use language such as the fact they wish to "remove the mundane boring tasks" that artists don't wish to do. And to "speed up our process to help us." Completely misunderstanding how the process of art works. Asking a machine to spit out a image, that is a static mash of past creatives most common ideas (Like a blonde woman, looking majestically to the left, with the sunset behind her.) Is not art creation, and if we as artists start to use this technology as a crutch. ESPECIALLY young starting artists. A wealth of very important knowledge and art process will be lost along the way."
"AI imaging is a collection of good enough images, but not great images. There is no intent, journey or soul behind the works. It's why so many classic animations move us as people. Because we can clearly see the dedication, intent and process behind these works. To hand this all over to corporations who's main goal is to fire as many artists as possible, to make as much money as possible...by letting them think AI is the best way to achieve this. Is bleak for our art culture and how it surrounds us as a whole."
"To wrap this up. I am talking about AI imaging processes in their current form. I do believe AI systems have a place in artists workflows, if they are created properly from the start. And this starts with only using copyright free, free to use, or paid for art that artists have opted IN for these systems to train off. "Opt out" should never even be a language used, as artists should never have their work used first and asked later."
"Using these systems for tasks within the art making process, where artists themselves are actually asked would go a long way to being better accepted. For example, many 3D artists like myself would pay well for a much better auto retoppo program. And these AI folk could place a lot of good work into something like that. And this would be creating a product that helps the process, not replaces it completely."
"But unfortunately, due to the running bull nature of this tech, the people supporting and behind it. I do not see good things coming from it. And we must rely on the slow process of law to help protect us. There are many fantastic senate talks in different countries at the moment taking these AI creators to task. And many major lawsuits being started in defense of our works. But law moves slow, and we as a community, must push back against these people trying to force us to believe that we must "Adapt or die". These AI company owners knew exactly what they were doing. People like Emad who owns Stable diffusion made sure their product was pushed out and spread as a open software fast, while there were no good laws to protect artists so the damage is already done. He is aware, that when the law finally catches up. He already has a open immoral system that people can integrate into the new law abiding ones. Which will keep immoral users happy and using the product."
"We don't need to adapt. They need to grow a moral conscious, and evolve to be better companies and products."
Discord question from @razrdraws: Here's a question more aimed towards a brief conversation we had here on discord about your art dolls. Yeah, a work in progress as you've said before, but do you have any idea when it may come out for sale on your own personal site? Do you have any more ideas for dolls?
"I am hoping to get a webstore up and running in the next few months for most of the sculptures and dolls I sell at conventions. I am just needing to finish the current convention run I am doing, as I tend to sell out of a lot of my stuff! I have so many ideas for new dolls, both fantasy and animal related! My next one, is going to be a Rat."
"I create art dolls sculpted resin parts on faux fur bodies. Here is one!"
Anyone you want to shout-out here on Colors? Doesn't need to be a friend, follower, or favorite.
"Honestly just a shout out to you all posting to this website/discord. Keep up the good work!"
That wraps up our interview with @KeyFeathers ! We at The Colors Team thank you for the sharing your awesome work with us and for being such an amazing artist! Everyone check them out not just here in the gallery but the socials they have listed on their Colors Gallery page too!
Check out the interview with our previous artist of the week @ShadowPikaboo here below:
http://colorslive.com/page/Meet-ShadowPikaboo
For those who may need a reminder
The Artist of the week will be posted every Friday so be sure to tune in! Prior to that, the artist may be contacted via email or other means at least a week or more in advance so be sure to check your emails( and spam) so you don't miss out on a chance to be featured. If you don't reply within 48 hours another artist may be chosen to be featured for that week instead and you will be in a future artist of the week update.
The announcement of who is the upcoming featured artist will be announced at least 2-3 days in advance or eariler so look out for that too! If you would like for any of your questions or comments to be featured in an upcoming interview please check out colorslive.com/discord and visit the official artist of the week channel to submit questions/commentary for a chance for those to be answered before Friday.
You can suggest a new artist for artist of the week on the forum post on my gallery or by posting with the #heyzyik tag.
Don't forget to join our very first remix weekly challenge #wc503 "Pocketable Monsters"! The deadline is Sunday May 21st, 2023
Stay creative!
Zyik & The Colors Team
