Mike Scholtis
Digital Artist
Cologne, Germany
My name is Mike Scholtis. I live and grew up near Cologne in Germany. Naruto, an anime series was actually the beginning for me drawing a little and having first real touches with it. Before that I doodled from time to time, but never had a deeper involvement with drawing or painting. I was 16-18 years old at the time. I developed real interest in art and painting through the video games “Guild Wars 1 and 2″. The artwork of Kekai Kotaki impressed me so much that I couldn’t stop thinking how to paint like that. When I started my apprenticeship as a media designer, I quickly got in touch with Photoshop and learned how to edit images and create pictures and illustrations. My first work was an abstract image of “Burg Eltz” (2013) with fragments and effects as you would imagine when experimenting with Photoshop. Over the years I have made fanarts for Dayz and created wallpapers and made them publicly available through a website I built at the time called “GFX-Edition.com”.
Over the years, I learned to use Photoshop’s brushes and bought my first graphics tablet, the UGEE G5. With it, I started painting portraits. At that time, I was most inspired by Agnes Cecile. In general, watercolor art was fascinating to me. I followed and studied her work for years, thinking how to imitate it digitally. During this time, I also started to think of an artist name. My first artist name was “Miltenart”. I got the name “Milten” from the video game “Gothic”. After months of thinking about it, I came up with a new name – “DEMORIE”. The name is composed of “de” from the Latin for “over” and “morie” from “memory”. Together the word should mean something like “About Memories”.
Like any artist, you are shaped by the experiences you have had and influence what you create.
I have always been interested in incorporating feelings and emotions into my paintings. But it was always important to me to illustrate feelings and emotions in a non-obvious way.
Under the name “DEMORIE” I publish since 2013 many portraits in different styles. From watercolor to oil painting similar techniques I have painted my pictures. Over the years I have been influenced more and more by different artists. I have summarized here a list of people who have inspired me the most through their works in the last years.
- Agnes cecile
- Kekai Kotaki
- Yizheng Ke
- Toko Suzuki
- Serge Marshennikov
- Nick Alm
- Izumi Kogahara
- Alpay Efe
- Wangjie Li
- Will Yu
- Habiba Green
- Jeremy Lipking
- Tito Merello Vilar
- Kris Coolens
Today I am more intensively involved with oil painting techniques, which I want to incorporate into my digital art. Of course, this includes custom brushes and tools that I develop myself in Photoshop. The possibilities are endless, and I’m taking advantage of that as a digital artist. I find rough painting with a focus on essential details very appealing and try to continue to study this style of painting. I also like abstract elements that break up the realism. the goal is to create a balance of abstract and realism.
I still paint for fun and distraction. I consider myself a hobby painter who is happy when others feel inspired by my works.
– DEMORIE