We are now reaching the end of April, this time is weird, the weather starts being warm and sunny, hopefully! I mean here in Denmark we have one day 20 degrees and the next -2, what can we do?! ;) Still it is nice to enjoy the sun, when it is there. But at the same time, I start feeling terribly tired, as if I was carrying a huge backpack, which kept being filled since end summer and the start of the school year, stuff kept piling on top of each other inside my backpack and now it is getting almost full and my back start hurting. I am really waiting for summer and time to relax. But it is also my fault, I am an enthusiast and I could not refrain from taking part in interesting projects at work, plus I am keeping cultivating my painting and slowly working up towards my goals as an artist. At least I like to start thinking of myself as an artist ;) I feel guilty about having taken a break from my portrait project, No Small Parts, which I promise to myself I will resume soon :) For now I needed to relax, I have received a wonderful bunch of orange tulips from my friend Sara Mosberg and here I have taken som pictures of them to be able to paint them and here they are :) I love those tulips, their colors and their shape. I found that the orange was burning like flames. I tried to reproduce and emphasise this vibrant color, by blending Yellow Gamboge, Scarlet Lake, Quinacridone Gold in some areas also Burnt Sienna, and then Alizarin Crimson and Cobalt Blue for the darkest areas.
For the leaf I mixed Yellow Gamboge, Emerald Blue and Yellow and Sap Green, Phthalo and Cobalt Blue for the darker areas. As for the theme, I was fascinated about how these tulips revealed hooded figures reclining on each other or within themselves. I call this painting Secret Covenant in the Open as is seems to me that the figures are trying to share a secret with each other in small groups bending towards each other, hiding their faces. I felt a contrast between their attitude and the flaming colors, as if they were trying to keep quiet but they are burning inside and cannot really hide it, as they pop up against the blue sky. I think I feeling in a similar way, i tried to keep quiet and do stuff during this period, but I am burning with restlessness inside. I think the lockdowns has brought everybody to a tipping point, as we had hold on and be patient through all this time and now we are tired and the new sunny season is not helping at all to keep business as usual. I think of that when I walk in town and see young people gathering in the city, finally open with shops and cafès available again. They are blooming and gathering together in small groups, just like the tulips, sitting happily on the grass of Fairy Tales Park (the city park of Odense in Danish called Eventyrhaven). I must admit I have never been so social in my days, my daughter is like me, so to us all this need of socializing seems strange. But we also enjoy the walk in the park, looking at trees, mushrooms, wild birds and thinking about what we will draw next. Underneath you can see some details of the painting, I have taken these picture with my new digital Nikon, I must thank my gorgeous hubby for this, I never thought I would have own a Nikon. Now I must replace my pictures in the website with better ones, I will do that in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy my new post and thanks for stopping by Emma ;)
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Soo, I finally remembered to make my April post from my calendar.
I call this painting Hands to the Sky, I apologize for the not so good quality of the illustration. Anyhow, I feel very connected to this painting, it represents one of the trees I have seen in Taiwan, actually in Taipei, the huge and exciting capital city of Taiwan. For this one, I wanted to imagine a natural setting, as I saw in the countryside, with lakes or rice fields, hills and these wonderful intertwined trees. In this case, I was fantasising about transporting this tree in nature, but I am working at some piece showing trees in the cities and I am considering publishing an illustrated book one day on urban nature. I am very fond of the trees I have seen in Taiwan, they are like jungle trees growing and weaving their complex textures in the heart of a busy, modern city. I think they have a complex role in the emotional impact of the city. These jungle trees are gorgeous and dramatic adding beauty to the urban landscape. They provide emotional relieve to people passing by, when I see them I feel as if there was an opera singer or a great pianist performing in the street. These contribute to create rooms for relaxing and day dreaming. Finally they look wild, they remind the passer by that, yes you are in a city, but you are still in a tropical area and back in time it was a jungle: this of course stimulates my imagination to the edge. Unfortunately, different from the hot temperature of Taiwan, we have had spiky cold air and even snow, with sun in between, it feels as April fool is running all the month ;) Have yourself a lovely end of April ;) Bertie So Easter is finally coming, I am trying to rest and I am enjoying some free time with my family and with painting. It has been an awfully busy time, with interesting projects and teaching and tones of meetings, while doing online teaching from home and I am simply exhausted. I feel exhausted as if it was Christmas, like the end of the year, but we are just half way :( And like at the end of each year, I have new propositions for this spring, first I have to resume the no small parts project, second I have to open my Etsy shop, where I want to sell my prints, postcards and bookmarks, as well and paper toys, which I will develop with my lovely husband Andrea. Being Easter I thought of a chocolate themed card games and here you can see a sample of the illustrations I am working on. My goal is to create food illustration with a poetic twist, which might look a bit like natural landscape or sculptural. I am trying to play with textures, light contrasts, lines and shapes, reproducing effects like tides around almonds and tridimensional light effects. I remember that when I was a child I was excited to see illustration that did not look like "for children", I loved to see elegant, artistic illustration, I loved illustrated books and paintings that gave me chill because they had something heroic about them. Among my favourite illustrators were Arthur Rackham and Alan Lee, I loved their elegant use of lines and watercolor. I tried to take inspiration from them, but not copying them, I am not a fan of what they say about "stealing" from other artists, I wanted to be independent and develop my own style, but I knew I had to learn from masters, I was about 13 and I was determined to improve. Those were the glorious days in which I drew my first botanical surrealistic subject: Tree-Lady. Now, for my paper games, I want to create bold, heroic illustrations of food, people and regular objects, that can challenged what we expect from illustrations for games. I want to work with paper because it is still a great material: it is natural, can have amazing textures and it is environmentally friendly. Moreover, as a participatory designer I love how paper artefacts invite people to a designerly dialogue. A paper artefact communicates openness for new drawings and concepts to be made and communicated, you just need your pencil. I dream of extendable paper-based games that have high visual quality, but still invite kids to make their own cards, playing both as artists and as players, unfolding their dreams through the papers, hopefully inspired by my watercolor paintings as I was inspired by Rackham and Lee. I will keep you informed about my Etsy shop and when it will be ready.
I hope you have enjoyed this little "taste" of my chocolate illustration and I wish you a Happy Easter :) Thank you for passing by Bertie |
AuthorFreelance illustrator and painter. Archives
May 2023
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