Unless you’re an artist or art aficionado yourself, odds are you don’t spend much time considering the effort and skill that goes into creating a piece.
But at Terra Virtua, we’re a curious bunch, so we wanted to find out what goes into making some of the artwork on our site, and what better place to start than with one of the OG artists on our platform – Amrita Sethi – and her incredible Voice Note Art © (and in case you’re wondering, yes, the copyright symbol is legit, she has sensibly copyrighted this idea because it’s so unique).
If you’ve ever had a browse on our marketplace, you’ve almost certainly come across Amrita’s stunning work. Her signature style is hard to forget, and when you discover all the layers involved in creating a piece, you come to appreciate these works for the masterpieces they are. Because, not only do you get the distinct sound wave contour, you also get the incredibly detailed images found within. And if that wasn’t enough, you also get the word spoken aloud, and the animation which brings it all together.
That sounds like a lot of work to us. Somehow Amrita makes it look easy to do, but we wanted to find out what really goes into a piece of art like this.
Idea
Where do you even come up with an idea like this? Amrita told us that the original concept arose when she was thinking of a birthday gift for her husband. She wanted something unique, and heartfelt to give, so she created her first piece for him, using the words ‘I Love You’ and filled in the sound waves with images representing her husband and her love for him.
Seeing how awesome it was, Amrita took her original concept and developed it into the Voice Note Art © you see today.
The Word
You probably realise by now that creating something like this is no easy task. Amrita told us that there’s a whole process involved in creating a piece of Voice Note Art, and it all starts with the word.
The work you see on the marketplace is created using a variety of words and phrases, these include the names of cities, common phrases such as ‘I love you’ and ‘Happy Birthday’, as well as the infamous year: 2020. But Amrita told us that these pieces can be made with any word, and she often creates bespoke pieces for individuals using their names, or favourite words.
As she wisely pointed out to us, ‘words are powerful’, and her interpretation of them definitely reinforces that power. But a word is nothing without the meaning we attach to it, so how does she decide what to include in terms of imagery? That’s where step two, the research, comes in…
Research
Amrita told us that this part of the process usually takes the most time, because as she explained; ‘every word has almost infinite meanings’.
When she’s doing pieces based on someone’s name, this means doing research into their lives, and what makes them who they are, and imagining how it can all fit together to represent that person.
For her commercial art, such as the cityscapes you can find on our marketplace, she tries to find what she calls ‘the essence’ of a word, phrase, or place, to base her designs on. Amrita describes her role as a ‘curator’ of images. As she says, it’s impossible to fully convey what a word, place, or phrase means to everyone, so she carefully picks out some of the key points and integrates it into the sound wave silhouette.
Illustration
With some concepts and images in mind, the drawing begins. Amrita first sketches out the overall concept, then adapts and refines it. It’s a complex process, as not only do the images need to be connected to the word, but they also need to fit into the contours of the sound wave of that word.
This takes a level of skill and creativity we can’t even comprehend, and it’s only once you look up close at these incredible pieces that you really appreciate how detailed and intricate they are. There are so many clever illustrations and features drawn into these artworks, and they’re all created by hand, which is next level impressive.
And that’s not even the end of it all, because next Amrita animates it all!
Animation
This is the absolute cherry on the cake for us, and also typifies what makes cryptoart so exciting – you can do things in the digital realm that you simply cannot do in the physical world. And Voice Note Art is just one example of how NFT artists are using their incredible talent, imagination, and levering technology to push the boundaries of the art world.
Taking all the insanely impressive work already done, the last step of the process for Amrita Sethi is to animate the work, and really bring it to life. She takes the movement of the sound wave, and overlays her intricately drawn images on top, so you get to see all this work come together as something really special and unique.
If you’ve not seen this in action, then head over to our marketplace, or download our Terra Virtua Gallery and check out these works in all their glory. Trust us, it’s worth it!
