Here I am with a new portrait of my friend Valentina Petri, literature teacher and writer for whom I have already made a portrait, a bit Cinderella style, now I am here with a new one. The painting is inspired by a picture of her in which she is holding a book. Here I have turned the book into a bird, to suggest how reading can be a day dreaming experience. She is smiling, gently holding the pages of the book, turning into wings, which will make your imagination fly into the story and living the story told in the book. Here you can see a bit of the progress. I tried here to capture the gentleness and wittiness of her look and smile, which I think characterises her personality. In her talking and writing she is ironic and witty, however, it is also obvious from her writing how deeply she cares for her students. And here she is inviting her students to read with her. To be honest I did not like every book I was suggested in school, but I have to thank a few teachers for having discovered some special writers. In fact the teacher has a delicate responsibility to enable students to discover literature and from there enable them to independently continue their journey.
Teachers are generally overlooked professionals, making a difference everyday and now more than ever it has become visible, that is why I wish to celebrate my friend. Thank you for stepping by :) Bertie
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I would like to share a little of my creative process in this post. In this case I am showing one of my last painting, which I call Primitive Tapestry. This painting is inspired by the pattern I have seen on the bark of a tree, which I have photographed in a public park while I was visiting the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in summer 2019. Here you can see the original picture. It is a little hard to articulate the process as I am not analytical about it. I this case I was interested by the trees in the park, in the middle of the city center. I approached those trees and I focused observing the bark, branches, leaves and roots and I took pictures that I would draw later on. When I can I also sketch on spot, in that case I could not: we were walking downtown, we were impatient to explore the area, it was hot and family expected me not to use an eternity of time watching trees like a lunatic, some people already looked at me in funny ways... you know the usual ;) At times I notice straight away interesting patterns, in this case it was a little more tricky and I notice the anthropomorphic pattern while I was rewatching the pictures on my mobile phone. Close up images are great to examine potential subjects and get inspiration, which can be instantaneous and just by zoomin in a different image appears to our eyes, this is what happened to me, other times I might sketch the subject in different ways to explore which twist I want to give to the subject. I this case as I zoomed it I saw a primitive pattern appearing to me which was fascinating, not my typical subject and so even more interesting, I saw a row of human figures, from heads with huge mouth to their upper legs. These figures were rough, in a sort of geometrical pattern and reminded me of African or Pre-Colombian art. I tried to amplify my impression in my initial sketch, which I made in the sketchbook I had with me. I used lighter golden hues to reveal more explicitly the human features I saw in the bark. Recently I revisited the sketch and the picture and started to remake a larger version of the painting. The paper I used was a watercolor paper A2 format, I normally work in A3 or A4 and I would like to work at larger pieces so I took this as an opportunity to revisit this subject. I started redrawing it at a larger scale, recomposing and also expanding a bit my palette and here we are. Here you can the evolution of the final painting from the start to the end. I tried to work with a negative painting technique, starting from the rooms in between the figures. Afterwards I gave very light wash of gamboge yellow with 8 and 6 size Kolinsky brushes leaving the areas I wanted to keep white. I worked a little more wet-on-wet with middle tones with a 4 size brush and then with wet-on-dry technique I added further details. I matured this style since I was around 12-13, I was fascinated by different painters where among my favourite styles I included surrealism, impressionism and also botanical and scientific illustration. I was practicing dance and I started noticing how natural shapes can recall human forms in a crystalized dance and I started exploring what I could draw from there. Now I am finding my sweet spot in watercolor, a typical medium for botanical illustration and I am trying to refine my technique to better represent realism and details, but to give a more immersive and authentic touch to oneiric images where anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and natural forms blend into each other.
Disclaimer - some people, including my daughter, joke about me using alcohol or else to generate these images, well... no way, no alcohol is involved in this process, I need my hands to be firm ;) Thank you for stopping by and have a lovely day Bertie Here is the first page of my newly made calendar for 2021, entitled "Botanica".
I call the painting displayed in January "Balancing in the Snow". I painted it around 2012, I don't remember exactly to be honest. I painted it during the intense period of my PhD under Aalborg University, we were living in Esbjerg, my daughter was still a child, she must have been around 7. At the time, I did already three small local exhibitions in local cafe-galleries, I even managed to sell 2 or 3 pieces, I was very surprised. We had very nice snowfalls at the time and I loved to walk in the woods around the university and, of course, observe the plants, bushes, trees and twigs hanging there naked in the snow in their crystalised dance, gently moved or roughly shaken by the cold wind. Let's not forget that Esbjerg is situated on the west coast of Jutland by the North Sea, so the wind there is not joking with you, the wind plays a rough, violent game at you, it invests you with the violence of a motorbikers gang and you have to deal with it! ;) Those naked twigs hanging in the snow amidst the violent embrace of the wind were simply fascinating, I could relate to them as I was dealing with the challenges of my PhD, I was trying to keep my balance in the same way as them. Moreover, I loved to watch the shapes of the twigs as they defined human-like figures. In those years I was kind of defining my creative process, which consists of waking around and observing a bunch of twigs and plants, or even people, sketch in place the main shapes with pure contour drawing. while at the same time daydream about what those shapes suggested to me, combining what they looked like with what they could be. I would sketch mostly with pencil, maybe add initial hints of colours with colored pencils, i would carry just a few, and then take pictures also to capture the colors of the surrounding. At home I would choose good watercolor paper, redraw the whole and paint. At the time, I was trying to experiment with went-on-wet technique, but I was also kind of improvising taking inspiration from artists like Brenda Swenson and Anne Abgott and their Apollinean and neat use of watercolor, which looked like a miracle to me. Anyway, I find that those twigs trying to find balance in the snow remind me of how we are getting out of 2020, trying to deal with challenges of the pandemic, finding a balance with our job, if we are still lucky to have one, or duty, our physical as well as our mental health. I must say thanks to my lovely husband Andrea who has created a program for generating the calendar days so that I could stick to the template I created in InDesign. Yep he is the one helping me to keep my balance ;) Happy 2021 Everybody and let's hope that those damn flying cars will arrive soon ;) |
AuthorFreelance illustrator and painter. Archives
May 2023
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