Interview with Polina Bulgakova: Building Serene, Limitless Worlds in Blender

Could you describe in your own words your artistic practice? What is it that makes a "Polina Bulgakova" work of art?

It's a lot of things together: of course creating, physically sitting and brainstorming, but also observing my environment. Sometimes I'm just sitting in the park and I try to listen, to pay attention to little things you don't usually notice. It actually takes a lot. Sometimes I'm just sitting with my eyes closed, trying to see in my head what I want to express. It's often really intense and intuitive, I can't really describe it.

Each artist has its own way but I observe, outside and inside my head and heart. Then I try to spill it out, but this is also a very intuitive process: I don't have a kind of structure or workflow. Sometimes even, when I create and I'm done with a work, time passes and only then do I understand what it's about. I get brought back to what I thought at the time, or to what I felt, and I realize why the work came that way. Sometimes it's years after. Usually I create art and I like the work as it comes, and people say it's beautiful. And then it's a few years later that I look back into it and I see things making sense.

Oftentimes you have a central element with a blank background in your works, creating a clean scene. Could you speak a little bit more about that? How and why do you produce in that way?

I just have a feeling. For instance, I want to make something with a tree in my work: I will first go into the leaves and textures. And when I'm satisfied with the tree, I decide what could fit around. It's also a very intuitive process. Sometimes I render a hundred samples of one scene before deciding how I want to proceed with it. Even if the final result may look ordered, it is a very intuitive and chaotic process. And for the centerpiece, I choose it because I like it, like some beautiful cup or mug that I want to have in 3D on my laptop. I store it and maybe create something with it. And from this, it evolves really intuitively.

3D artists sometimes either create everything themselves or they use 3D objects that already exist. Where do you land? Do you create everything that is in your works?

If I'd create everything, it would take me hundreds of years. I usually model for myself a few specific things that I want to get exactly as I see in my head, and then when I work on the environment, I download pieces. It is pretty fun. I'm fine with buying others models and I sell my models too actually.

However, in the beginning, when I just started to learn 3D, I was creating everything, for technique purposes, to get better in it. Because sometimes, when you buy a model, you need to fix it. So you need to know how to construct it.

It's really nice how, in digital art, there's a strong feeling of team spirit and people really help each other out. To get more into the technical side, what software do you use?

I mostly use Blender for modeling and rendering each frame. I usually do 30 fps, meaning that in every seconds there are 30 pictures and I use every single one of them, and then I compose these into a video in Premiere Pro. I sometimes use Photoshop to create certain textures, if I want to paint an element, or for a color correction for example: I can paint for myself a specific pattern that I want.

I know a lot of softwares like Cinema 4D, Houdini, 3D Max, Red Shift, Corona V, and others, but Blender is just so cute, convenient, and efficient. It's really user friendly. They invented geometry nodes. It's kind of parametric modeling and you can do everything there: you can model, put your notes together, simulate things, make liquids, clouds, etc. Moreover, Blender works on the GPU. It is free and supported. The other ones can be very expensive.

Could you tell us a little bit more about how you got into 3D?

Well, I always went to traditional mediums since my childhood, and while I studied in university, I used to sell my oil paintings. This went pretty well. Then I moved countries and I lived in teeny tiny studio, and the only thing I could do there was watercolors, nothing at a big scale. However I like it when I can paint large scale, when I can just go wild. But oils are also very smelly, so I moved to digital painting. I painted in Photoshop and then, Covid-19 happened.

I moved to work from home and suddenly I had two more hours a day. So I decided to learn something new. I accidentally saw some tutorial on YouTube about Blender and how to model a donut, and I got into it like that… I felt so hungry for this knowledge. It was so interesting. That's how it started. It was 2019, and it just went really fast. I also bought a course about the environment, the nature, the landscapes, and it was truly amazing. I think it gave me the biggest push I had. I started, I continued, and I didn't stop.

One of the things that you speak about is wanting to create a feeling of limitlessness. How do you achieve this in your works? Where does this desire come from?

When I started painting and creating on Photoshop, I felt like I was missing something, especially after traditional mediums where you can literally touch the artwork. You can touch your paintings, it's immersive. When you're just painting digital, it's not really the same… it's flat. I think it is important for me to feel that I can do anything. I can turn around 360 degrees and there is something I created everywhere. It gives me this feeling, when you realize it never ends, that there is no limit. I can continue wherever I want, however I want, I can expand it to eternity. There is no end. It gives a sense of freedom, not only in art, but the feeling that you're so in control and at the same time you don't control anything. To me, it's a feeling of pure freedom.

In digital art especially, it's like there are no rules. You never say "oh no my canvas is not big enough". And there are also three dimensions, not simply a flat surface, which also gives you depth to explore.

You also produce commissioned artworks. How do you work differently on a commission-based project as opposed to a work for yourself? Has working with clients helped or made your practice evolve?

The processes are completely different. When working for a commission, since there are some limits, the main thing this teaches you, and this helps in your personal art practice, is some kind of discipline. You learn to set deadlines for yourself, even when no one's watching, or even if I know I don't have to. It's very useful and it also teaches you to stretch your possibilities when you want to do something.

Clients have different requests and you have to follow them, but I love the challenges, because sometimes in my own art, I also have to do things I don't want to do. But it's completely different, and it was a harder process for me in the beginning. People have all kinds of requests and it can be really hard to satisfy them. But, working on commissions teaches you to be more calm, to not take things personally, to accept reality as it is and to just let it flow, not through you, but next to you, without impacting yourself. And this is great.

When someone encounters your works, what is the idea, the reaction, the feeling that you hope they feel?

I don't think I have one. I usually want to hear the truth, the honest opinion, and I not always like it. My boyfriend for example, he's a really honest guy and he will say what he thinks. He's Israeli, he rose up here, and people there are really straightforward. They say what they think. I remember the first time I shown him my new work, he told me the story was missing and asked me what do I meant, what was it about. First I thought he was supposed to say that it's beautiful and that he loves me, but he told me only the truth. And since then, I started to appreciate it. Reactions can be different but this is the beauty of art. Each person thinks differently and you can't just make them feel one thing. I just hope they feel something good and not something bad, that's it.