Did you ever wonder about a giant elephant with butterfly wings stomping down your street? What? Sounds weird! Okay; then you must have fancied admiring our beautiful planet lit with fairy lights, floating in space, while you gaze outside your window panes. Oops, Did I awake those other-worldly childhood fantasies and dreamy imagination which cannot come true in real life? But you can at least see what they will look like.
Our uncommon Surreal Digital Manipulation Artist ‘Suricts’ who has been playing with pictures digitally will give you an out of the box view.
Her unparalleled efficiency will provide you a vast array of surreal and magical photos. Here is a sneak-peak into her life and some gyaan for our budding artists.
Tell us about yourself
I am María Gutiérrez, a.k.a Suricts, 22 years old from Madrid, Spain. An international tennis player currently ranked 535 in the world. Sports are an important part of my life and this athletic life allows me to travel all over the world, competing in different tournaments from different countries. I don’t get enough time to assist a normal College. Therefore, I am pursuing an online course in Graphic Design.
Journey, Motivation & Passion
In 2018, a serious injury had put me out of the court for several months. I utilized this time to learn digital manipulation; spending hours reading and watching YouTube tutorials. Being a wildlife and nature lover, I always found a huge inspiration for animal pictures. I created an anonymous Instagram account and started to upload my initial artworks there. I was trying different things until I found my style and ‘personal touch’ which I think is very important to have if you want to stand out from others.
My artworks started to have more surrealistic and magical vibes. A few months posting my artworks went by and I started to reach more people, worked for a couple of ‘influencers’ until one day I received a message from the famous DJ Avicii. He saw my work and wanted me to create something magical for him. I ended up creating a few artworks that helped me to grow my audience significantly in a very short time.
A Digital Manipulation Artist or A Photo Editor?
Nowadays it’s easy to create good photography content on social media. You just have to go to a famous and cool location, take a few photos with your smartphone and add a nice filter to it. As an artist, my goal is to take these ‘normal’ photos to a new level, something that people have never seen before. Maybe you have seen an elephant photo one million of times, or the NYC skyline. But I’m sure you have never seen an elephant with butterfly ears walking down New York City. It is a manipulation, but made realistically and makes people stop scrolling for a second to appreciate it.
Any Plan You Follow to Achieve Your Aesthetic Style
My route plan is different for every creation. Sometimes I have the design from the conception, sometimes I get inspired to create something surrealistic from a picture of an animal or a place and, the other times I start something and it ends up being a different thing. There is no specific or right way to do it. I like photography. Initially, I started posting normal shots of my garden and city on Instagram account. After a while, I realized it had nothing special. I want something unconventional. The first one was just adding some hot air balloons to an elephant photo. After that, added the Louvre Museum pyramid on a lake photo that I took on my trip. I started trying more ‘weird’ things until I found my style. Every photo is different but they all have a common thing.
An Insight on Photography
In the beginning, I edited my shots, and; after a while, I also started using wild animal photos from free stock image pages (Pexels.com, Pixabay.com, Unsplash.com). Later, when the spectator numbers were humungous, the collaboration with amazing photographers was considered, they shared their shots to create something magical.
Now, I use my shots, travelling makes it easier to click some breathtaking pictures from heavenly places. I blend my pictures with free stock photos; meanwhile, I keep doing collaborations with very talented photographers.
First Breakthrough
After working for Avicii, I got so many offers for a custom artwork design. The list includes corporate also who want to sell their products. I built my website (suricts.com) to accept all kinds of offers. The first was for a headphone, I created an artwork of a tiger sleeping under a moonlit blue sky with headphones on.
What do you need for Digital Art, share some Photo Manipulation Technique?
Adobe Photoshop is the best and most professional tool you will find for photography manipulation. For this same reason, it can be complicated to learn, but as I said before, the Internet is a very powerful source of information to learn anything you want. I have been featured on the official Photoshop account three times.
Once I have the composition ready and blended with Adobe Photoshop, I use Adobe Lightroom to adjust the colors and tones. With this tool, you can make all of your creations have similar adjustments, which is very pleasant for the Instagram feed and your portfolio. I carry my laptop (MacBook Air) and a graphic tablet (Wacom) to develop anything while travelling.
How can I make my Digital Art better?
The dominant part of every image is blending. Understand the tricky line between a magical and a ‘fake’ composition. My all images are ‘fake’, you will never find them in real life, but the blending technique is where my whole work and exertion are centered. The minute detailing is my concern to make a picture look as real as possible. Some of my images are a mingled composition of 20 different objects from 20 different shots taken on different moments, different places, and, different times. You have to adjust every single thing; the lights, the shadows, and the sizes.
Also, try to understand how things work in real life, you have to know how light would impact different textures or objects. How would be the shadow of certain things? Knowing all these details will make the outcome spectacular with a distinctive feeling and a different touch that will make it extraordinary.
The difficult task is to know when to finish work. You keep noticing things to retouch. I’ve had images that I finished and re-edited a thousand times. I keep giving a different touch to my old images. Digital art is not math. You don’t get it right or wrong, but it is interesting to see how many versions of the same image you can get.
The Triumphant Motif Plan
The recurrent theme of my artwork is nature and wildlife. I always try to showcase the beauty of our planet from an artistic perspective. Being a resident of a city, we tend to forget the astonishment of our Mother Nature and the fellow creatures ‘animal’ that share the same land and water with us.
I narrate stories with my artwork. In the Covid-19 pandemic situation, I want to transmit positivity, calmness, and happiness. The recent example of this was the image shared of a deer walking an empty yet full of colorful flowers Brooklyn Bridge on New York City
I also created an artwork depicting the circumstances of the world confined at home. A man admiring the sunset and the clouds from his wooden house, while some jellyfishes ‘swimming on the sky’. This is how I see the virus situation; we are all confined at home while the virus is swimming out there.
For me, feedback is the most treasured thing. Reading and reverting to all the comments and messages, love, and appreciation for the art and, an atypical feeling it creates on different people; this is my ultimate satisfaction. My triumph. I am blessed to have 20k followers in a span of two years with no negative criticism.
Any Guru or Godfather?
I never had a mentor; some people shared tips on certain things. While interacting with the audience, I acquired knowledge in various areas. Like recently, I connected with one of my followers who happened to be an online marketing expert. He shared some useful tips to improve the website and increase my reach. This was helpful for me; since I am developing my website where I sell my best artworks as posters.
Above all this, my family and friends are my biggest support. Before uploading any artwork, I usually share final images with my best friend who helps me in the enhancement of my work. His artistic insight gives me a new perspective to improve my work. It’s always better to have four eyes instead of two.
The funniest thing is that I keep this whole digital-manipulation art very private. I publicize my work under an anonymous name. I want to keep my ‘sports life’ and ‘art life’ separate. Only the near ones know about my creative side.
Any Idols or Inspiration?
I admire a few photo manipulation artists whose work inspired me for betterment. Robert Jahns (@Nois7) is one of them. We share the same style in digital art. I get many ideas by observing his magical work. He is an inspiration to me.
Another artist I admire is Marcel Van Luit (@Marcel_van_luit). His style is different but he works with wildlife photos a lot which acts as a catalyst to me.
Life as an Artist and The Fame Game
I am grateful as a digital manipulation artist. It is not a lonely life. I think an artwork isn’t complete until someone interacts with it. The audience completes my art, and I’m so lucky to have such a good engagement with my audience.
I love to communicate with them, read their comments, listen to their stories, and the bond they create with my images.
I felt utterly proud to see my work featured on the official Photoshop account for three to four times. The biggest tool for digital art; and being recognized by them makes me realize that I’m doing something right.
The Final Gyaan for Beginners
In digital art, beginners need to understand a few things.
A novice has to be highly active on social media. It is an appropriate way to increase viewership and potential customers. A good and spectacular portfolio helps to convert a potential customer into an actual customer.
As a beginner, you also have to do many ‘free’ jobs before making money. But these complimentary works will help you to grow the audience. The best course of action would be doing works for influencers with humongous spectators.
Lastly, a good artwork has a balance of both, style and idea. I believe a good idea will make the image stand out.
This was a compact interview with a digital manipulation artist to give a whiff of her artistic lifestyle and, to provide all the learners skilful knowledge from the expert herself.
You can follow and check her work at
This article is written by Shruti Agrawal. You can find her writing on her Instagram. Follow her to read her writings.
This article is Curated by @frameshade. Follow him for his photography work
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