Made With Envato: Cosmic Creator Aron Visuals

Digital artist Aron Visuals’ work is truly out of this world. His cosmic masterpieces, featuring bright night skies, milky universes and beautiful cityscapes, have earned him a keen Instagram following and evoke a sense of awe and wonder, which is exactly what we all need at the end of 2020.

Aron’s mission is to provide his followers with an escape, and a portal into his own imagination. He tries to connect with his audience, and creates each of his artworks to convey a different emotion, story and meaning. 

He started out drawing when he was very young, and had a childhood dream to become what he is today – a professional artist who makes a living by creating stories through art. Since kicking off a journey as a digital artist just two years ago, Aron’s amassed over 35k followers on Instagram and been featured by the likes of Adobe Photoshop, Creative Cloud, and – of course – Envato Elements. 

We sat down for a heart-to-heart with Aron to learn about his background, his inspiration, and how he uses Envato Elements to bring his incredible creations to life…

I started drawing when I was young. Even in school, I was the guy that decorated the school walls without someone asking me to. All of my friends and teachers were sure that I had talent, and that one day I would be known for it. I believe that a lot of us have a talent for something. 

Eventually I became a photographer – something that I was also really interested in. I had wonderful experiences but it was only a hobby, nothing close to being a job. I didn’t have any idea about cameras or technical things at all, but somehow it just came to me. It was amazing, but eventually I decided I wanted to become a digital artist. 

I describe my style as a surreal digital art – I combine real things together with the unreal. It’s a technique that allows me to create anything I imagine without any limitations.

From the day I started, I’ve practised and kept pushing myself to become better until I got to the level I am today. It’s been two years so far, and I can’t wait to see what I accomplish in the next five years.

My mission is to express emotions in my artwork as much as I can. Every piece portrays a different emotion, story and always has a meaning. 

When people look at my work, I want them to escape from this world and to enter my “imaginarium”. As I am more of a night person than a day person, my inspiration is mostly active at night. This is why I love night and dark vibes.

Dark and bad days are still part of our life, and we need to learn to accept them. We need to keep going and believing in better days, and I think that my art represents that hope. 

Before I started doing digital art, I had a really crazy life and had a lot of bad things happen to me. But creating helped me to keep pursuing my dreams, and that’s why I will never stop doing it. It’s a way of life now and I can’t imagine a day without creating. It’s my love and passion.

Back in the day, creating a signature style was so hard. It makes me so happy that now people can recognize my art everywhere. That was one of my main goals. 

I’m inspired by the things that have happened in my life, and the stories of people I know. I’m also inspired most by the music I listen to. I love symphonic metal, rock, and epic orchestral music. Ivan Torrent and his music are a big inspiration for me as well. I create the idea and vision in my head while I’m listening to the music.

However, the universe itself is probably my biggest inspiration. Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins are great for learning more about the universe. My art is about creating a vision of the universe through my eyes.

How my ideas get from my imagination is even crazy to me. Sometimes I don’t know what I want to create until I create it. At night, I love to sketch ideas or write notes so I won’t forget the visuals I’ve imagined.

As an artist who depends on stock images, sometimes it can take me a long time to find a subject for my artwork. Often I know what I want, but it can take forever to find everything that I need. Once I find all the items, then I start creating. Sometimes it can take one day, sometimes it can take three to four days, or even weeks – it really depends! I am very careful with the details and I’m a perfectionist, which means my artwork can take a long time to finish. I just always believe that I can do better! 

Once I’m done, the next step is creating the Instagram post. It’s important for me to do this with passion and love– this way, I know I’ll never get bored of it. Instagram is the only platform where I share my work. It helps me find clients, but I don’t create specifically for Instagram. I am the same person today that I was when I started: numbers will never change me.

I would say the most difficult step is searching for stock photos and finding the perfect image. Also, my perfectionist nature means that I spend a lot of time staring at my artwork thinking, “oh look at that star there (out of millions of stars in the sky), I don’t like it, let’s remove it ”. But I’ve learned that that’s just a part of myself that I have to deal with. 

For me it’s so important that – even without knowing how it will look at the end – every piece needs to be something that I love. I would never share an artwork or show it to the world without being proud of what I’ve created.

I heard about Envato Envato through my friend Benny Productions and his Youtube videos. I was like “How did I not know about this website before?!”

Envato Elements has really helped me a lot. There are millions of pictures that inspire me, and push me to imagine what I could do with each of them. I’ve never seen more amazing photos and graphics in one place. There is nothing like it to be honest. 

The best thing about Envato Elements is that for a monthly subscription, you get all the things that are available, like photos, videos, fonts, brushes, courses – and so much more. Envato is one of the reasons that my creativity has grown so much now, and I’m thankful from the bottom of my heart. 

For now, I mostly use brushes and photos. I am so impressed by the universe and sky pictures available on Envato Elements, but I really want to use more images, videos and even fonts as well. Looking through the photos on Elements, I make collections so that I can use them in my upcoming works.

My artwork ‘In the Middle of the Night’  was created in an edit race for a Benny Productions YouTube video. We had to pick 12 photos from Envato Elements and use them to create an epic artwork. 

It was a big challenge – knowing that you have 12 images and you have to use every single one of them, it was hard but interesting for both of us. I did a lot of different artworks and I was so happy to be there and use the amazing pictures from Envato Elements. As you can see, we used pictures featuring 3D rock elements, universe sky photos, a photo of a little guy walking – it’s amazing how our imagination can create such different images from the same stock photos.

In my artwork ‘The Eternal Silence’, I used a range of different universe sky photos. I love to take time to use different photos to create an epic sky, it is one of the most interesting things for me. I also used a boat from PixelSquid360 and a city photo. You can see the full process in my step-by-step videos, where I show what I use and how I create the finished product for every post on my Instagram profile.

If I had to choose one stock site for my work, it would definitely be Envato Elements! It has everything I need, and I’m happy and impressed with everything it has to offer. 

I use Photoshop for everything I create, and I always have my Huion tablet with me. For me, Photoshop is like a blank sheet of paper. Some talented people can just go to it with a pen and draw something amazing. But for others, it will likely be hard to create something without learning and practising. Everyone can use the same tools but create a wide range of different styles depending on how they work, what tools they use, colors they choose – the sky’s the limit.

As I said there is nothing special that everyone else doesn’t know already. My workflow is actually very easy, and for the people that are open to learning, they will get it fast. The first time I opened Photoshop in 2014 and saw how complicated the program looked, I gave up immediately. But you just have to keep trying – you can’t learn everything in one night. 

My main tip is that you don’t need to go to art school to learn and know how to create art. I know a lot of people who went to art school, and they still don’t know 50% of the things that creators like me know without it. For me, creativity is much more important than knowledge. Because without creativity, you don’t can’t apply knowledge in a unique way.

Yes of course! I have already started recommending Envato Elements to all of my artist friends, because I really think that Envato has something special that no other stock site has. The price is almost “funny” for what you get after downloading photos, videos, fonts, 3D pictures, brushes, overlays and more. So, if you’re reading this – what you are waiting for? Go get your subscription and take your work to the next level.

Right now the only place where I sell my artwork is as prints on DeviantArt. But I have plans to soon open my first shop with my artworks available for purchase. I’m so excited about it. I have sold some artworks to a range of different companies, and have also sold a lot of artworks and commissioned artworks to artists and musicians for album covers.

The most important and most unreal accomplishment for me was when Photoshop featured my work. That happened four times last year, and they even started following me too. That was one of my dreams and it happened! I’ve also been featured by Adobe pages such as Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Students. Their following and the support they give me is amazing. I’ve also been working on artworks for various songs and albums this year as well, but I can’t reveal those projects just yet. 

Perhaps the most important thing that happened to me this year on my birthday was the Photoshop tattoo I got on my arm. I designed it little by little, with each part telling a story. The tattoo took about seven hours, and it’s very big with lots of details. I’m very proud and happy to have it on me, because Photoshop has helped me to create every day for the last two years and live the life I want.

My first piece of advice is that you don’t need to go to school to learn how to be an artist. Nowadays, if you want to learn, you have everything available on the internet for free. Envato Elements (over on Envato Tuts+) has amazing courses too!

One of the biggest learnings I’ve had is that I had to work and practise every single day to become what I am today. Of course, not every day is a good day, and a lot of the time what I created wasn’t always great, but you have to keep going. One of the most important things is to never give up even when it’s hard. Don’t let yourself be controlled by bad thoughts or your family, your friends or whoever limits you – just keep doing what you love and make your dreams come true. Work hard and show them what you can do. 

Today my life is actually a dream come true, and all of you can do the same – it just depends on how much love and the passion you have for what you do. This started as my hobby and I would never have imagined that it would turn into a full-time job that I could make a living from.

If you put a lot of time, love and passion into a hobby, it will become a job. You can become your own boss, which is something I always wanted. Every dream is possible: it just depends on how much you want it.

Feeling inspired? There’s more where that came from! Check out our Made with Envato interview with Pop Artist Peppy Colours, learn the ins and outs of Instagram with Frankie Lee Mwah, or step Inside 3D Illustration with Amrit Pal on the Elements Blog.

And, don’t forget to head over to Envato Elements and start creating today!

Aron is an Envato partner. All opinions provided within this interview are his own.