Igor Vitkovskiy is a young artist from Ukraine who creates some brilliant Photoshop brushes and tools - he's also a very talented painter/illustrator. We love chatting with professional artists to try and see where they came from and how they made it, so we hope you enjoy this interview.

Make sure to check out Igor's store here and keep reading for some of his gorgeous art below.

Q. What got you started in the wonderful world of digital art?

A. Oh, this was a long time ago! At school at the age of 8-10 I discovered Microsoft Paint when I got my first PC at age 10-11. I used Paint to create slides for my cartoon that I animated in Microsoft movie maker, also added some music and effects and had a lot of fun :) Then I discovered a software called Game Maker...

I used to paint all my pixel art and sprites inside Photoshop back then, all my paintings was very bad and I didn't really expect that I could be a professional artist one day. I also painted a lot of fan art, sci-fi, my own board game cards and so I had some traditional painting basics before doing digital art. Then I got a Genius Tablet… I think I made like 2-3 artworks and forgot about this horrible tool.

Then I went through 4 years of web & graphic design… I needed money to play WoW on official servers, so I was making banners for adult websites and other small gigs using Photoshop for 1$ - that was a start. Then were collages, matte-paintings and I was finally able to get a Wacom tablet at the age of 18. This is the start of my real digital art path. I think I've tried everything: 3D, animation, VFX, web design, matte, but got only one true love – Digital concept art & illustration.

Q. What is your best advice for young artists looking to build a career doing art?

A. Doing art is simple, doing good art is very hard. Learn your basics & tools as much as you can, try to paint

every piece as best as you can and try to always make any new painting better than the previous. It doesn't matter it's personal art, free work or paid work. You're doing art commissions for 10$? Spend as much effort as if you were getting paid $1000 instead. Never stop growing and you will succeed.

Q. Do you have a ritual or a particular steps you take before you paint to boost your creativity?

A. Mostly – no. For client work it's easy – you have a description – gather some references – thumbnails – done! For personal art I'm working mostly with abstract shapes, just doodling with no idea just waiting to catch something interesting. Laying on a couch in silence helps my brain generate some nice ideas and designs. I just have to make sure not to lose them later when I do art.

Q. Favorite food?

A. Hmm…fried potatoes & vegan salads mostly, pea soup cooked by me & my girl :)

Q. During what time of the day are you the most creative?

A. Mid day from 1 to 6 PM & evening/night from 8 PM to 5 AM.

I've tried all sleeping modes, from waking up in the evening at 6-8 PM and going to sleep in the morning at 10-11 am (most horrible and depressive of life ever) to waking up early in the morning at 5-6 AM (you feel really fresh, but very lazy most of the day, and not very productive) and going to sleep at night at around 9-11 PM.

My most comfortable and productive schedule is waking up in the morning at 8-10 AM and going sleep at 12-5 AM.

Q. How did you end up creating awesome brush packs for other artists to use?

A. It started when I realized that mostly all packs of brushes from different artists are similar…same trees, same basic brushes, clouds, oil brushes, they were all using and sharing the same ones and calling it their own.

So I started to actually create my own custom brushes to replace those from other artists in my brush set, with the goal to only have unique and useful tools made for me, by me. Interesting brushes can also impact your in a cool way, so experimenting with brushes is always good if you want to make your art and stronger. I have a huge number of custom brushes but most are still yet to be released. They will be soon! I have only 1 experimental set of gouache & acrylic emulation brushes, but I will update it soon also because this is was only my first try and it can be improved.

For fun I made a few crazy brush packs like Shia Labeouf Motivation brushes, Most Depressive PS Brushes, Game of thrones brushes - all created in a few hours and made available for free. They were very popular which motivated me to create more but also focus on more elite tools.

Q. If somebody could buy all your art skills and leave you with none, how much would you sell them for?

A. I don't want to sell them :) If I got millions of dollars, I might start doing some global projects to push humanity's progress and stop the destruction of our planet, but I don't think masons or oil tycoons would allow me to live a long life :)

I think I would only trade my art skills for music or singing skills since I always wanted to have my own post-hardcore band.

Thank you for this great interview and for reading it!