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About the Artist
Stephanie Pui-Mun Law has been painting fantastic otherworlds from early childhood, though her art career did not begin until 1998 when she graduated from a program of Computer Science. After three years of programming for a software company by day and rushing home to paint into the midnight hours, she left the world of typed logic and numbers, for painted worlds of dreams and the fae. Her illustrations have been for various game and publishing clients, including Wizards of the Coast, HarperCollins, LUNA Books, Tachyon Books, Alderac Entertainment, and Green Ronin. In addition to the commissioned projects, she has spent a great deal of time working up a personal body of work whose inspiration stems from mythology, legend, and folklore. She has also been greatly influenced by the art of the Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, Surrealists, and the master hand of Nature. Swirling echoes of sinuous oak branches, watermarked leaf stains, the endless palette of the skies are her signature. Her background of over a decade as a flamenco dancer is also evident in the movement and composition of her paintings. Every aspect of her paintings moves in a choreographed flow, and the dancers are not only those with human limbs. What Stephanie tries to convey with her art is not simply fantasy, but the fantastic, the sense of wonder, that which is sacred. While most of Stephanie's work is done with watercolors, she experiments with pen & ink, intaglio printing, acrylic, and digital painting as well.
Techniques and Tutorials
-For more watercolor and drawing tutorials, check out Dreamscapes, 175 full color pages of instruction.
Why name the website Shadowscapes? I do a lot of high fantasy art with the jobs I take on, but when I sit down to paint something for myself, I prefer things that are more subtle. Perception, a way of viewing something with a different mindset. Shadows of reality that are almost grasped, but at the same time dancing in a dream-world made of light and absence of light. Shadowscapes is the name I put to this painted reality.
So where does my art come from? Much of my art derives its inspiration from mythology, legends, and folklore. I draw from many cultures, from my own Chinese background, through that of Roma, Celtic, Greek, Roman, and Indian to name a few. I have been interested in fantasy since I was eight when a friend introduced me to the world of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and for a long time, my art was just about creatures and figures from fantasy novels. Even now, much of it still comes from these sources, because I still enjoy it. But I slowly found myself moving away from strict fantasy in both literature and my art, and into the realms before and beyond "fantasy", which is mythology and folklore. Tales in mythology and folklore stem from emotions, needs, desires, hopes, and beliefs that have survived through time, for thousands of years, across hundreds of cultures. These things are part of the essence of being alive, and of being human. There is something in these tales that makes people hold on to them, even without need of words on paper, but simple word of mouth. And so it is these images that I try to capture with my paintings. In addition to mythology though, the other aspect of my art is the concept of "sacredness". I remember in an art class I once took, the lecturer was telling of a trip of his to Africa. He had stayed among tribes. One day, one of the men took him out and pointed to a lake, far in the distance. "That is a sacred lake," he was told. And he spoke to us in that lecture hall about how little in our world today is truly sacred any longer. The reverence that African held for the lake, the wonder, and absolute belief he held. It is that sense which I try the most to convey with my work, a sense of wonder for things within the human experience that somehow sit upon the edges of our consciousness. Things that are hoped for, or perhaps only half remembered. Things that could be, if one were to look on the world and think and live with a different mindset that could see all the possibilities and wonders in this life. Aside from all that though...there is the part of me that just loves to draw and paint for its own sake. Forget meanings and high-minded interpretations...when it comes down to it, I just have a need to draw and create.
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All images, graphics, and content on these pages are ©Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, 2000-2008.
All rights reserved.
For permission to use artwork, see the FAQ
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