Weekly Art Challenge Winners - Friday, February 16, 2018

What an exciting week on the #stateofthearts feed!

First off congratulations on creating a record breaking week. Today we feature the following three pieces which include a current record breaker bringing in 147 upvotes and $94.99 in steemcash on the stateofthearts trending feed, as of this time.

#1 Featured artist and art #1, @faffy

This piece by @faffy brought in a record setting 147 up-votes and $94.99 steemcash (to date) on the @stateofthearts tag feed. The art features all the elements we especially delve into: 1. Imaginative subject 2. Experiential Design 3. Story aspects 4. Multimedia features (click on the @faffy) 5. Nice craft.

Congratulations @faffy on this epic success to date.

#2 Featured artist and art #2 @jaquevital

The following points of overview apply to all features.

We chose @jaquevital’s Thor Ragnarok as one of this week’s State of the Arts features for three reasons.

1. First of all, for technical prowess, it’s hard to believe @jaquevital didn’t use some trick-techniques to trace and fabricate this quality of a realistic image in some 14 hours. This leads us to our second reason for making this selection.

2. Here at State of the Arts, we explore the emerging field of Experiential Design (ED); which we define as the commercially valued experience of art/the arts, of design, innovation, and of creativity which may or may not include the purchase of an art piece itself. Click @jaquevital where our featured artist does this in part with a speed drawing which shows the colored pencil technique in action. SteemIt provides a great forum for exploring ED. For, here we have financial flow coming back to the creative by way of the experience of the art, and the viewing the art, and not necessarily from purchasing an art piece itself. We feel that’s the way it should be for creatives. They should be rewarded financially just as much as those providing other roles in industry.

3. The third reason we chose this piece has to do with another one of our initiatives: imagination. Although not representing an original character, the art does reflect a fantasy subject, Marvel’s Thor from the movies. Certainly into fan art with unique twists, and as we also admire such technical precision, good enough for us today, thank you again for bringing this to us @jaquevital.

Congratulations on your outstanding piece and Weekly Art Challenge feature.

#2 Featured artist and art #2 @bennettitalia

Here’s a sketch from another one of our favorite creatives, last weeks featured artist, @bennettitalia.

Now, as we present this piece, we want you to keep in mind that we share art of all stages from doodles to renderings, ages from kid to adult, skill levels from novice to journey-person, and required immersion of time and effort to produce it. With this doodle--and again with inherent creativity apparent--we like the way the ocean and environment merge into the hair and the face. Thank you @bennettitalia for bringing this creativity to us with your tag @stateofthearts.