Interview: Tiffanie Gray

This week’s interview is with Tiffanie Gray, a renaissance woman in many ways, as you’ll see.

What is your quest?  To have fun, make beautiful things, to learn and grow, and hopefully to make a little money on the way.

I have never had formal lessons. But, I have had many mentors along the way, both personal and book/video. I love Boris Vallejo’s work, and it definitely has influenced me, as has old Bob Ross videos which a discovered a couple of years ago! I’ve read the Lord of the Rings 4 times (one time in a single weekend while I was babysitting!), Mercedes Lackey, the Dragon Riders of Pern, the Chronicles of Narnia and so many other stories and authors. I would say that my favorite story of all time, though is Jonathon Livingston Seagull. I guess it came at a good time in my life and has always stuck with me.

I’m creative it so many ways, it’s hard for me to stick with one. If you look up the book “Refuse to Choose”, I am a scanner by their definition, of the Serial Master/Sybil type. That means that I have several things that I want to master, and will come back to them over and over in a circle to increase the mastery level and as the Sybil, I keep finding new things to add to my list!

My creations have gone in cycles, and I’ve added more, as it went. As a child, I wrote stories from a very young age. I still have my first written story from second grade, about Pegasuses. My drawing came next, but it was, like my stories, very crude. Embroidery and crocheting were next, followed by sewing, then pattern design, wood carving and burning, and then macrame. All of that was by high school. Stories and drawing were still developing, but I was by no means a prodigy in them. I really wanted to do book cover design and so studied and read everything I could on it. After a year of community college I joined the US Army at 17 years old. I turned 18 during basic training.

What was I thinking?

Military life slowed some of the mastery levels down, though it added some new ones, and marriage and family took another chunk out of my creative time! But, once I was out of the military, I really started working on art again, and made a number of leaps and bounds as I learned how to manipulate colored pencils. I started really getting into portraits, mostly fantasy portraits of the characters we were playing in our weekly D&D/ShadowRun/GURPS/Battletech games.

As we played, my story telling abilities were growing, too. I kept being frustrated, though, by Hollywood stealing all my story ideas, and partials, and turning them into movies before I could get them finished and published…..

Then I found Project Dogwaffle…The funny little paint program with the funny little name. I had wanted to learn oil and water color, and this looked like the answer, especially since I couldn’t afford Corel, the giant at the time and had too many kids in the house and not enough money/space to try Pigment Media. I have worked with Dogwaffle, since free version 1.2, until it was renamed PD Pro. During that time I became a beta tester for the program, and then it was renamed PD Howler (It’s current name), and I’m still a beta tester for it. Now I also do tutorials and webinars on it. I specialize in Landscapes and graphic design, and 3D art and texturing using it.

At the same time I was teaching myself Web design, I designed and administered websites for 3 non-profit companies. I improved in sewing and added beadworking and wire jewelry making and creating Celtic knotwork, both in art and in cord and wire.

I was also sewing and designing Renaissance costumes, for our family and for sale and learning blackwork embroidery, homeschooling 5 kids, improving acting, singing and dance skills. I also edited 2 books, several short stories and designed covers for them, for my husband and my niece. I wrote some short stories and did the covers for them too. Published on Amazon. But, I wasn’t thrilled with my skills on that so, I knew I needed to find something else to improve it. So I started leaning how to create clothing and avatars for Second Life, mostly at the urging of my kids, so that they could get free stuff.

Once the kids were all out of the house, I started putting my mind to getting better at the art and the writing. I really started working on DAZ Studio and Poser, which I had owned for some time, but had never conquered. Now, I theoretically had the means to make covers! In a very short time. I was joining writing groups and working on things, and mostly percolating ideas and skills at this time. I also went to Beauty College, followed by Instructor’s College, so I have a Master Instructor of Cosmetology License and am licensed in Oklahoma, Colorado and working on North Dakota. I owned and managed my own shop in Colorado before we moved. And I was my husband’s legal assistant during that time. Now he is a high school teacher and we are living on a reservation, so I have a little more time again…

I still only have the 3 short stories and a coloring book published, but I have 3 novels that are more than ½ done. I took a side trip into texture design for 3D works, and have 3 stores with my products in them. So, another thing I’m working on mastering! I also really need to update my websites and get my galleries up and running. If I could work on one thing, or at least one thing at at a time, I might accomplish more, but there isn’t anything that I want to give up, so I’ll have to keep developing slowly.

(ed. note: Tiffanie does stuff…