| Favorite Animal | Lion |
With a peppy attitude and uplifting personality, Sofera is a traditional artist and hobbyist having fun creating art. Specializing in graphite, Copic-brand alcohol-based markers and colored pencils, otherwise known as “pencil crayons” in Sofera’s homeland of Canada, Sofera illustrates realistic animal portraits filled with vivid detail. She has also recently begun venturing into the creation of shadow box artworks.
Accomplishments
- Remembrance Day Artwork Submission: 3rd Place
- Teacher’s Choice Award: Art
With a goal of spreading joy around the world, Sofera livestreams regularly on Twitch Creative, creating artwork, live, while chatting with her community. “Life is too stressful and I just want to create a community where everyone can relax and have some fun!” she exclaims. Generally streaming Sundays and Thursday evenings, Sofera enjoys hanging out with everyone and chatting about life, telling stories, and just being silly. From Morinville, a town in central Alberta, Canada, Sofera proudly displays her Canadian heritage and often shares Canadian oddities on her livestreams with her International viewers. She can often be found opening Kinder eggs and hosting giveaways for artwork and Canadian items. “Come hang out with me and have some fun while I create my artwork live,” she encourages. “Everyone is amazing!”
Sofera also enjoys posting videos of her drawings on YouTube, filling her channel with time lapses and art vlogs. “I would like to expand the endless possibilities of making more artwork and creating more unique videos showing my process of my artwork,” she explains. Always open for suggestions, Sofera is constantly exploring new types of videos to create to share her artistic endeavors and own personal techniques and style with others.
Sofera has been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil. In school, she noticed that she held a stronger interest in the arts than her peers. At a young age, she would often receive positive feedback on her creative endeavors, ultimately leading her to decide to pursue an artistic journey and take her artwork to the next level. She became especially inspired by an art teacher with an impressive portfolio of watercolor work. “It lit a fuel in my artist career as he was so inspirational!” Sofera remembers. “I wanted to be just like him.” Since then, Sofera signed up for as many art classes as she could and focused on improving her work each day.
Sofera most enjoys realistic, traditional artwork and describes her own style as realism. “I like to try and get my subject as close to the reference as possible,” she explains. Always eager to learn, she has experimented with several traditional media, but has found that she favors alcohol-based markers and colored pencils. Copic reigns her favorite brand for markers. “There is nothing more therapeutic then putting a medium hard at work for creating something intriguing and beautiful!” she exclaims.
Sofera’s work previously focused on celebrities and film and television characters, illustrating her favorites, such as the minions from Despicable Me and Squirt from Finding Nemo. The Minions also make a frequent appearance on her Twitch livestreams. “Baboy? Baboy! Ahh, baboy!” Sofera excitedly imitates in her best minion voice. Recently, though, Sofera has re-discovered a passion for depicting animals. She’s begun drawing everything from wolves and tigers to birds and tarantulas. Sofera enjoys fully rendering an animal’s character and seeing the pencil lines come together to complete the piece, whilst overcoming the difficult task of realistically portraying a beast. “Capturing the essence of an animal can be very challenging,” Sofera explains as she remembers the difficulties of replicating a creature’s exact likeness. “When executed properly, it can be very rewarding.” Although it may be a challenge, Sofera executes this task flawlessly. When viewing any of her animal portraits, the viewer is instantly given a glimpse into that animal’s life and is captured by the amount of detail and the level of skill used to portray such fine intricacies. “Bringing an animal’s personality to life through your art is inspiring,” Sofera elates.
As a Leo, Sofera’s favorite animal is the lion. Relating with the lion on a personal level, she’s embraced a zodiac/celestial theme on her Twitch livestreams, shrouding her community in shades of blue, teal, and violet, some of her favorite colors. The Leo zodiac symbol proudly resembles her brand and a lion created with colored pencil at a 4×6 inch size even adorns her offline screen with eyes as deep and mysterious as the galaxy behind him.
Recently, Sofera has also begun venturing into the creation of shadow box artworks. Inspired by Brittany Cox, a fellow artist and broadcaster on Twitch Creative, also known as BrittTheBadger, Sofera has challenged herself to learn the art of creating shadow boxes. Determined to apply her own artistic style to the medium, she’s taken inspiration from Britt’s “Badger Burrow Dreamboxes” and has begun a series of her own, “Looking Glasses”. “I think, now, I have found my niche and am very excited to create more shadow box art,” Sofera asserts. These complicated artworks consist of several layers of cut paper colored with marker and colored pencil to bring an entire scene to life. These pieces can be viewed at a multitude of angles, each offering a unique perspective.
Sofera’s first endeavor with this new medium focused on a tiger within a dense scene of lush, green vegetation. Prowling amongst the leaves and ferns, the beast is illustrated in full detail, with rich orange tones and striking dark stripes. Headed straight for the viewer, the feline is shown in a straight-forward fashion, allowing the viewer to feel as if he is prey hiding amongst the vegetation. Fully rendered, these blades of green radiate with bright saturation and several finely applied layers of values and tones. “I really challenged myself with the tiny details with the paper cutting and I am not experienced whatsoever in doing paper cutting,” Sofera reminisces. “This is new to me, and for me to be able to pull this off was brilliant.” Her very first detailed box, this piece has become one of Sofera’s proudest moments and one of her favorites of her creations. Little did she know that this single piece would lead to many more intricate shadow boxes.
On a continuous art journey, herself, Sofera understands those who are looking to better their own artwork and improve their creative skills. “Let’s go on an adventure, together!” she exclaims. Sofera believes in creative passion and encourages anyone with a desire to create to follow that drive. Don’t let anyone discourage you from experimenting or trying to improve. “The only person in charge of your life is you, and if you want to do art, do it,” she lectures. “The only person stopping you is yourself.”
