Nene has been drawing and painting her entire life, but she began her career as a professional artist in 1994 when she was approached by a company called Wizards of the Coast to contribute work to the popular collectible card game “Magic: the Gathering”. She worked for WotC and many other CCG companies for the next several years, until she grew tired of bringing to life other peoples’ visions. So, she left contract art behind and became a print artist, painting only the things she wanted to paint.
Making the switch from contract artist to print artist wasn’t easy, because the pay is much better in contract art, but the freedom to paint whatever she wanted more than made up for the loss of revenue. Eventually, she made a name for herself in the world of faery art, selling her paintings at shows around the country and online, and now products adorned with her art can be found in stores all around the world.
For the first ten years of her professional career, she worked exclusively in watercolor. In 2004, she became enamored with digital art, and the more she studied it, the more dissatisfied she became with her older paintings. So, she set aside her watercolors, bought a digital art tablet, Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop, and began experimenting.
Her first digital pieces were actually hybrid works with watercolors mixed with digital elements, but eventually she became comfortable enough working with the art programs to complete the transition to fully digital works.
The inspiration for her works comes from a variety of sources, but the vast majority comes from a story she has been working on since high school. “The Zarryiostrom”, her most intensely personal project, is an epic fantasy series that she tricked her poor, unwitting husband, Steven Plagman, into writing. As of this date, the first four novels of the Zarryiostrom, “Powerborn”, “Usurper”, “Marionette”, and “Tyro” have been released as self-published works, and they are hard at work writing “Concubine”, the fifth book in the series. All told, there will be nine books in the series by the time it is completed. Each book contains 20 paintings by Nene, showcasing the various characters of the series.
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