Category: News

My first oil painting experiments: a pair of dragons, master studies inspired by two paintings by artist Mattew Stawicki.

“Ardighiaccio” (white)
26×31 cm, oil on canvas, 15/02/2026

“Ardifiamma” (red)
26×31 cm, oil on canvas, 14/03/2026

The world has changed. As early as 2021, I began seeing the first AI image generators. That year, I also discovered that all the paintings I’d uploaded to Deviantart had been scraped and used to train the first AI models. My fight to protect human art began, a fight that has suffered many defeats on multiple fronts, especially when Artstation, Meta, and so on joined the ranks of platforms, giving all their content to the AI ​​world. Social media makes me sad now, and I’ve lost some of the desire to publish my work on a thousand platforms: in 2023 I decided to focus on my own website, greenedera.com, and I’ve worked hard to upload my work and related works in progress, to create my own little digital home that I can furnish as I please.

I will continue to support handmade art, and although my digital art is “hand-painted,” the pollution of the digital art environment continues to grieve me. I won’t abandon digital painting—I love it too much, it’s fun, it’s powerful, it’s portable, and it’s convenient—but I’ve decided to broaden my horizons and tackle oil painting.

In the physicality of this medium, in its antiquity, I’m finding some comfort. Of course, when a photo of an oil painting exists, it too is prey to the training of AI models, but it doesn’t really matter because the piece itself is unique. Its three-dimensionality, the way the colors change depending on the light in the room, are truly beautiful. A print of a digital painting is very beautiful, but an oil painting truly has a presence in the room. Pencil is my primary drawing tool. Watercolor is delightful, but I struggle to convey the power of colors in my mind on paper. Oil, I must admit, has immense potential.

Thanks to Matt Stawicki, whose Dragonlance paintings I’ve admired for years, for posting the videos that helped me understand how to paint these dragons, and hopefully many more.

📹 Here are Matt Stawicki’s paintings I used as reference for my studies. I’ve always found them beautiful, and there’s something special about them: the artist has posted on artstation pics and videos of himself painting them, which were crucial for my learning.

Small Dragon Painting #16 (white)

Small Dragon Painting #13 (red)

More about Matt Stawicki on his website

I’ve learned that oil painting is complex. That getting the colors you want is a challenge in itself. That drying times teach patience. Taking a decent photo of an oil painting is tricky. And the colors don’t stay the same over time. And so many other things, along the way.

Article published 01/06/2026 #noAI

A wasted year, a journey through the fog. I had the time, but I didn’t have the mind. Emotions in turmoil, stress, and problems, and here we are, very few paintings to remember this 2025. But oh, for certain I’m not likely to forget them.

What is “art VS artist”? This excerpt from Forbes says:

“[…] In addition to helping promote artwork, #ArtvsArtist humanizes creators reminding us that artists are people too. The plethora of creative work available online can cause us to forget the people producing it. “People seem to think art accounts are just run by robots, not actual people trying to hone their craft,” concept artist, Yoshi Yoshitani says. Dehumanizing creators can encourage theft of art […]”

Blog post – February 6, 2026 – Greenedera #noAI

A painting, a final memento of a brief but meaningful journey together. During 2025, I struggled to listen to my art—I listened and heard only silence, or the call of distractions. I accepted very few requests, and only from people I cared deeply about. One of these was Anomalous Thracian, with whom I worked for three years. So many paintings, so many ideas, so many stories.
It can all end so quickly.
I didn’t know it, yet I was desperate to finish this painting without wasting too much time. And so this painting was finished, and just in time, you might say. Thracian loved it; he framed it and showed me a picture just before the end. I will hardly ever forget this painting.
Go, Ardrael, sea elf, heroine and warrior, aboard your ship. We’ll see each other on the other side of the dawn.

🐮 Artwork reveal: Kaz the minotaur and Delbin the Kender (Dragonlance fandom) sailing their ship towards new adventure. Commissioned by the Dragonlance Nexus as internal illustration for the adventure manual “The Journals of Kaz the Minotaur – The lost colony” featuring a novel by Richard Knaak and a D&D 5th ed adventure. Other illustrations will be revealed in the next days, stay tuned!

🎨 Click here for info about the manual

Check the 6 paintings of this series

15 december 2023, Elena Zambelli – #noai

Update, 4 new Art Process Videos mounted and uploaded. Videos that show, even in a speeded-up way, the creation of a painting… I love them. They have been influential in the past, because those created by other artists have taught me so much.

Today, I record videos for 4 reasons:

1. To help me focus my painting time (while recording, you can’t switch tabs and mess around)
2. To show that what I create is real – no “artificial intelligence etc.” Each painting is the result of many hours of work, and here you can see a part of that.
3. When the work is a commission, sharing the painting process with the commissioner is unique and precious for both.
4. Maybe there is someone, out there, for whom these videos can be useful in their journey as an artist.

Social media visibility? No. I know my videos aren’t the right kind for Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. So, often I don’t even bother to make them vertical, or short. These are full art processes, so they are horizontal and relatively long.

There are four new videos spread across the site, and also visible on my YouTube. Here they are:

1 – Daphne and Levi – 1 minute

See artwork page

2 – Unexpected encounter – 1 minute

See artwork page

3 – Legend of a sacrifice, complete process (2 minutes)

See artwork page

4 – Drow and furbolg (2 minutes)

See artwork page

Article: 16/11/2023 – Copyright 2023 Elena Greenedera Zambelli, all rights reserved #noai