Vivien Capper

Hello my name’s Vivien and I’m from the beautiful county of Kent, England though currently living on the coast near Rome in delightful Italy with its exciting, lively way of life and vibrant colours and designs.

I started out as an artist in 1982 developing Indian ink artwork of a variety of subjects especially figurative artwork and abstract floral designs, then progressed into creative photography and digital artistry thanks to Sebastian Michael’s amazing courses at ‘Photoshop Artistry’ and the advanced courses ‘Awake’ and ‘Kaizen’.

My inspiration is drawn from my love of nature, figurative artwork and Italian design using many textures, patterns and colours. I’m thrilled to have some of my artwork in various publications including: Living the Photo Artistic Life, My Creative Images and have had various artworks mentioned in the Shift Art Challenge and was thrilled to win the challenge with a piece called ‘The Mysterious Cobbled Street’ in 2018.

Now in 2020 I am concentrating on a series of Fresco-style Art taking my inspiration from Italian Frescos. This involves a lot of patterns, swirls, designs and colours and adding them to the model. Most of my models are from my Photoshop Artistry and Awake courses and the Colby Files.

You probably know me through this fabulous magazine ‘My Creative Images’ founded and edited by the amazing James Hurley. This month he asked me to write an article on my creative journey and my new project!

I started ‘Vivien’s Creativity Lab’ last year – a creative hub and online school for visual artists who would like to take their art and crafts to a new level online. I describe it as a creative place where creative folk can find all sorts of ideas and tips and learn how to get their work ‘out there’ and noticed in the crowded online sphere.

I had so many problems getting my work online so thought it might be a good idea to write a creative online course to help fellow visual artists or crafters, who are going through the same problems, learn how to get their work online and not just sitting pretty on a computer or Ipad.

Well after much ado (!!) I finally managed to upload and launch the course in the autumn of last year. ‘Selling your art and Crafts online ‘The Essentials’ beginners course’. Delighted if you take a look, click here.

Setting up an online course is not easy. Things got even trickier as time went by, not easier! The more I delved in, the more I found there was to do, and the more I did the more complicated it became! Layout, pricing, learning platform, privacy, writing content, finding images, copyrights, etc. Anyway pleased to say that I now have three creative online courses to date for visual artists, crafters, and hobbyists to help get their products noticed online and selling.

Often as visual artists and crafters (me included) we love designing our next masterpiece, but very often forget that someone might like to buy it and hang it in their home and beautify their special space, and I’ve tried to shed some light on how to go about it in a very practical step by step way.

Someone said once that it’s not difficult coming up with ideas, the difficult part comes later when you have to put the work in!

As a teacher the easiest part was preparing the lessons and syllabus. I spent a lot of time mulling over the best ways to present things in the course and make it as simple as possible for students to follow and implement the ideas.

Thank you for your patience and reaching the end of the article! Next month I’ll be talking about branding (you can download my free mini-guide to branding here) and marketing your artwork or craft items.

In the meantime enjoy viewing this lovely creative magazine.

You can also follow my blog, if you like, for more creative ideas and tips or just to ask me a question – the link is here