Alai Ganuza is an artist, educator, and founder of one of the fastest-growing online communities dedicated to contemporary realism and creative learning. While she’s best known for her oil paintings, her creative process often begins in the digital world. From early fan art inspired by anime and video games to sketching ideas on a tablet during art school, digital tools have always been part of her practice. For Alai, painting is about exploring emotion, memory, and atmosphere, whether through canvas or screen.

Today, she moves fluidly between oils and digital painting, using each to support and inspire the other. Digital helps her experiment quickly and play with new ideas, while oil offers a slower, tactile depth. Some of her digital pieces even take on a life of their own, often mistaken for traditional work. Alai sees the two approaches not as opposites, but as part of the same language — one that allows her to stay curious, adaptive, and always connected to the joy of painting.

We asked Alai about her art, creative process, and inspirations.

Your work bridges oil and digital painting beautifully. What does each medium give you that the other doesn’t — and how do they come together in your process?

Oil painting alla prima can create happy accidents that are unique to the medium, something that in digital art is hard to recreate and has to be done mindfully. Usually, these accidents are unexpected and give the painting a sense of magic. However, I have found now digital tools that can almost recreate this.

Working with oils is very connected to how you feel in the moment. Your mood and your physical state are represented in the brushstrokes. If I'm feeling unwell or tense, the painting would reflect that through rougher textures or a different energy. Digital, on the other hand, is more controlled in that sense, but it offers a lot of freedom to experiment. There is no fear of wasting materials, so you can be bolder and take risks with colors and techniques. That freedom has helped me evolve and grow quicker as an artist.

Many fans are surprised to find out some of your pieces are digital. Do you intentionally try to mimic the look and feel of oils, or does it happen naturally?

In the past, I painted more “conventional” digital art, but now, because I love the look and feeling of traditional painting, I naturally try to mimic it on my digital pieces. I try to paint it the same way that I paint with oils. I don't use bucket tools, gradients, selection tools, warping tools… I just select a brush, a color, and move my hand and wrist as if I were painting oils.

You’ve mentioned that digital painting feels like a space of freedom — can you share a moment where experimenting digitally led to a surprising or emotional discovery?

Digital is less intimidating. Because you are not wasting materials- canvas, paint, etc- if you don't like the result, it is as easy as erasing the painting and starting from scratch with a new one. Also, the selection of color palettes is wider, and there is no mixing of colors involved, so the creative process is much faster. I have painted several “boring-looking photos” with bolder color choices and created interesting finished artworks.

Once, I had a collector commission me to paint an oil painting based on one of my digital pieces. It was a scene of a sink with some dirty plates and cutlery, and they wanted the same palette and composition, but translated into oil, something more tactile and everlasting. While working on it and looking at the final result, I realised the colors in the oil painting were even more colorful than the digital one. It wasn't just reflecting on a photo; I was interpreting my digital work through a different medium. The finished piece ended up being brighter, and the collector loved it.

You’ve built one of the fastest-growing online communities around contemporary realism and creative learning. What inspired you to take on that role as an educator?

Teaching came naturally to me. In some shape or form, I’ve always “taught” other people. I would help friends with maths, languages, and school tasks in general, and then at university, I would explain topics to my classmates. And I’ve always loved sharing knowledge. When I started sharing about oil painting on Instagram, I kind of created this unplanned teaching role for myself, and it was fulfilling and amazing to see positive feedback from followers.

What do you think young artists most often misunderstand about traditional vs. digital painting?

Some young artists still think that digital is “magic”. They believe that art is about pressing a couple of buttons and voilà!, you have a painting. But, similar to other media of art, it requires a learning process. Also, some think digital is cheating or an easy way to paint because you can use tools like tracing or undoing things… but you can also trace and “undo” in traditional painting. There is so much work and understanding of the digital tools behind the creation of digital art.

How has your own artistic identity evolved since those early digital experiments as a teen? Is there anything you’d tell your younger self?

I remember I was very detailed with my paintings, and spent days and weeks on a single piece, but I also did that with oils when I started with hyperrealism. But when I started exploring traditional mediums, that made me evolve in digital.

I would tell my younger self not to worry too much about perfectionism and details. Just keep painting fast, with mistakes, since this would make me learn so much faster and in a fun way.

Where do you see your practice evolving next? Are there any themes or techniques you’re excited to explore deeper?

I wanted to explore surrealism as I now consider myself experienced enough in some themes to paint them out of context and bend reality. But with AI incursion, surrealism has become so mainstream because you can just generate random things and paint them.

I do want to explore other themes and techniques- I am excited to know what it can be and what it would look like. But experience tells me, planning does not give results, so for now, let's keep experimenting and having fun.

What is a fun fact about you?

I began painting on a tablet from Lidl that my partner gifted me. It was incredibly difficult to use. It completely threw me off having to look at the monitor while drawing with my hand somewhere else. It felt so unnatural at first.

I started by creating fan-made skins of Hecarim or Amumu from the video game League of Legends, and I even entered Heroes of the Storm, a contest organised by Blizzard. I spent months working on those pieces! Looking back at them, I can almost cry. At the time, I thought that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I even streamed on Twitch once. The video might still be out there somewhere, and it should stay buried deep in the internet.

What else fills your time when you’re not creating art?

Other than work? Most of my time is spent replying to emails, photos, shipments, and editing… that's 70% of my work. The creative part only makes up about 30%!

But when it comes to hobbies, I love videogames and they are my go-to escape when I'm feeling burned out. I’ve retired from selling my life to League of Legends; these days, I chill with games like Minecraft, Terraria, or Stardew Valley now.