Halloween Special 2

While I am working on my Halloween costume, I am also working on a project combining arts, photography and fashion.

With a wide range of costumes, put together with anything I already had at home, and the help of a ->photographer I am about to create a series of photographs.

Although this is around the time of Halloween, I didn't want to focus on typical monsters and a dark, horrific atmosphere. 

To make something different, I wanted to experiment with more or less normal clothing or surroundings but give them a surrealistic, dark or simply stunning twist.

I will show some photos on my ->Instagram account and in a sereis of posts on this Blog I will - as always - explain my intentions and techniques of my art.

As my theatre teacher always said, it is not important for an artist, that people will easily understand their artwork. On this Blog, however, I want to inspire people and help them to create their own artworks, so I'll explain a little.

Unexpectedly, it got colder and I had to change my plans. In a warmer outfit, I will show you my recently created hat.

2. "Lady with apple and hat"

Who's this crazy auntie?
To bring out the most awesome hat in the world (my new creation, the fruit hat), I dressed in basic, modern every-day clothes with an elegant touch.
The I went to the market, looked for fruits and ... let the crazy, fun shoot begin!

 The Lady with the fruit hat loves fruits and sells them at a market. She is a very serious business woman. Don't try to mess with her precious fruits.

Of course she's also a lady, so she takes her time to look elegant when she walks through the market.

Her taste of fashion is classic and extravagant, the fruit hat is her most special item. Although it looks like a little umbrella...

When she needs a break from all the demanding customers, she rests at a quiet place.

Wait... she secretly eats her own fruits?

 She seems to think that noone sees her... Her expressions are not very lady-like here... What a crazy auntie

Omo, now she has been caught! What to do?

BONUS:
At a public place it is simply a given to keep it clean of all garbage:

Halloween Special 1

While I am working on my Halloween costume, I am also working on a project combining arts, photography and fashion.
With a wide range of costumes, put together with anything I already had at home, and the help of a ->photographer I am about to create a series of photographs.
Although this is around the time of Halloween, I didn't want to focus on typical monsters and a dark, horrific atmosphere. 
To make something different, I wanted to experiment with more or less normal clothing or surroundings but give them a surrealistic, dark or simply stunning twist.

While I will show some photos on my ->Instagram account, in a sereis of posts on this Blog I will - as always - explain my intentions and techniques of my art.
As my theatre teacher always said, it is not important for an artist, that people will easily understand their artwork. On this Blog, however, I want to inspire people and help them to create their own artworks, so I'll explain a little.

Today, I will show you a concept which is not as outrageous as the ones that will follow, just as a start.

1. "The 10.000$ funeral"

 "Her husband died. The celebrity is waiting for the funeral to start."

 "Who is she glancing at at the funeral of her husband???"

 "Husband of celebrity dies in tragic accident"

"Widow is left with a huge sum of money"

This could be starts of articles in magazines, right? Exactly this is what I intended. My portrayal of a no-name celebrity on the funeral of her "beloved" and extremely rich husband is entirely satirical.
I don't want to critizise any real celebrity on funerals, but rather I chose this extreme example to not only critizise but also SHOW the struggle of celebrities to escape the public eye, their sometimes fake-looking emotions and also the hastily judging press.

To portray a high-class widow, I combined the finest pieces of jewelry and black clothing for my outfit. Of course, sunglasses and dripped mascara had to be included. The old-fashioned fascinator and gloves and overall black clothing give the impression of a widow in grief, whereas the jewelry and bright red lipstick hint to her intention to stand out, still be the centre of attention in the media.

To make these photos appear as normal as possible, as if this ould have really happened, I chose not to include any dramatic effects and also keep the location of the shoot as normal as possible. 
The surreal undertone is merely concentrated in the emotion shown on the face which stands in contrast to the suggested context (funeral).
Just once I experimented a little and turned a picture into a negative. A simple change, but I found it worked well with the subject, colours and perspective:

BONUS
After the shoot I went for a coffee. Certainly, I was the centre of attention on this day which was totally a bonus effect to my portrayal of a unspecific celebrity attending private affairs in public. 

This part of the project focuses on the subject, theme and interpretation of the pictures rather than on an outstanding look, but in the next few posts I will show you stunning compositions and unbelievable realities ;)

Style Challenge 2

My last Style Challenge focused on Cartoons, this time I want to try something new!
For this Challenge I'm going to use a picture of me as a reference and redraw it in different, known artistic styles of the 19th and 20th century. I will try to keep it as close as possible to the photo but also include topics and methods that were portrayed in the past.
Can you recognize some or all of the styles? 
Let me know which one is your favourite!

I attempted to revive eight different styles, the picture in the center is my own art style these days.

This is me:

I had to make lots of compromises when it came to the style, topics and materials of the times, but that was the fun challenge to it. For some I recreated the themes and style, for some only the materials and drawing techniques to combine aspects of my portrait and of the art styles, so not all might be accurately portrayed.

Expressionism

With the chisel tip of a black Copic marker I tried to resemble the unique style of woodcuts and I felt so free and added some background.
The topics portrayed in this "era" of the early 1900s were dark and real (e.g. war and prostitution but also biblical references). I used works of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff as a reference because he created woodcuts with people in it. To make my face look rougher and make the feel of it darker and more real I reinforced some shadows and wrinkles in my face.

Art Nouveau

I used Copic markers in soft, brown and peach tones and a brown liner to recreate the soft look of these romantic looking pictures.
Floral patterns and ornaments decorated the medieval-looking women. Unlike their faces which were realistically drawn, their hair sometimes was kept more simple, cartoon-like. As the medieval times were used as a role model in this style, I used a ornamelntal and floral bow to resemble church windows and emphazise the unique romantic style in my portrait.

Dada

This is a strange art style which originated in poems. It is even stranger to try and create a portrait in this style because Dada is based on coincidences. To recreate this interesting aspect, I sketched a portrait of me as I normally would (which is nothing like this style) but then I picked the colours I used randomly (which is the same method which was used to name this style by the way).
To keep a realistic look, I seperated the dark, medium and light shades so I could shade my drawing but I picked each Copic marker blindly: one of each for each part (face, hair, make up, eyes and one for rouge).

Impressionism

It is evenly strange to only paint a portrait in this style. I also cheated a little here and used only the drawing materials and method of this style, not including the topics portrayed and the style.
Instead of just drawing the colours I see, I sketched my portrait beforehand and drew what I was. But to keep the impressionistic feeling, I used pure acrylic colours and tapped them on, mixing them only on the paper.

Kubism (analytic)

Although most of you might know Picasso and his paintings, you might not know of this unique style of his. Using his painting "Ambroise Vollard" as a reference, I recreated my portrait in my favourite kubistic style.
To keep the feeling of a relief I used brown and peach coloured pencils. 

Minimal Art

Actually this was a style mostly used for objects, but the general thought was to reduce the forms and colours to simple elements.
This is hard to portray in a portrait that I still wanted to resemble me, so I only drew some outlines with pigment liner to keep it simple yet artistic.

Pop Art

This is the style you most likely recognized, even if you don't know much about art. Since it is very popular to know, it worked. The thought was to portray trivial pop culture, so most portraits were duplicated many times or drawn as if the person was a cartoon character. Which is what I did. I used pigment liner and markers to recreate the strong colours and lines of catroons.

Surealism

To create a surealistic portrait really was a challenge, since this style portrayed dreams and the subconcious. It created a strange atmosphere through connecting things that don't have a connection in real life.
In the end I used two pictures as a reference, even including the clock of my favourite surrealistic artist, Salvador Dalí. In the other picture I used, the artist René Magritte drew some humans and I used this style as a reference for drawing my face.
Eventhough I should only draw my face, I had to include things that would look ridicoulus together, so I also included the grammophone of that drawing.
I used coloured pencils for this drawing since I can't really handle oil, which was most commonly used.

I hope you enjoyed this artistic experiment!
I had so much fun recreating all those styles I admire, maybe I could inspire you to do the same?

Style challenge

Today I drew myself in 9 different cartoon styles. These are all my favourite styles, characters or stories which have influenced my childhood and my drawing style. Let's see if you can recognize them ;)

The one in the center is my own style

So here's the solution and some information about the styles:

Center: my own style
I prefered to draw myself in a more realistic way as in my usual illustrations.

Center, right side: Shoujo
This is a style often used for romantic manga. Eventhough everything is exaggerated a little, I tried to keep my facial features visible.

Center, left side: Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki
I had to include this style because I absolutely love his movies. Eventhough it was a challenge to draw my long, straight hair because I had no reference for this. So it turned out a little strange. 
I really like to see myself as a Studio Ghibli character because I feel like I could belong in one fantastic movie of theirs now.
reference used: Mononoke (Princess Mononoke), Kiki (Kiki's delivery service), Sophie (Howl's moving castle)

Bottom, right side: Gravity Falls
Gravity Falls is my favourite cartoon, so I had lots of fun drawing myself as one of these characters. I really like how it turned out, besides the eyes which are not close together enough.
reference used: Wendy

Bottom, center: Tim Burton
I really love Tim Burton's movies, especially his style. To recreate it, I used grey and black colour pencils over my Copics. This is one of my favourites :)
reference used: Victoria (Corpse Bride)

Bottom, left side: The adventures of Tintin / Hergé
I absolutely love this cartoon, so I tried to keep the style as close as possible. I used drawing ink instead of multiliner, which was really a challenge. Also I had no reference for a young female character.
reference: Tintin

Top, right side: Asterix / Albert Uderzo
Since my father has collected the cartoons of Asterix in his youth, I grew up with them. And I still love them. This version of myself is my absolute favourite. I also used drawing ink for this one.
reference: Panacea

Top, center: Disney
As any child, I also grew up with Disney. But I like the old movies more, so I wanded to draw me as a princess like Cinderella, Snow White or Aurora. To archieve the former look, I outlined with similar colours as I coloured. I really like this version, but I should have used a lighter blue for outlining the shirt.
reference: Aurora (Sleeping beauty), Cinderella (Cinderella)

Top, left side: Spirou & Fantasio / Franquin
I love their adventures. Actually, I wanted to draw a character of Gaston, another comic by Franquin which I like more. But since it's both Franquin, it doesn't matter.
reference: Stephanie

Let me know which one is your favourite and what I could have done better in your opinion :)

Bleeding Heart illustrations

Today I finally finished the cover for my comic 'Bleeding Heart' and I'd like to show you two of my masterpieces so far :)

The first one shows the three main characters of the comic: Victoria and Lamia, who we know already, and the mysterious Lucien Oddwood, who we'll meet soon. There will be more illustrations of the most important characters someday ;). This picture is coloured with Copic markers, unlukily you can't see the light shades of Lamia's and Lucien's skin in the digital version.

And the second one is the cover. Here I used Copic markers and coloured pencils to colour. Also in this digital picture, you can't see the light skin colours. I hope this picture makes you curious about the story while also not telling too much. I first tried to draw an upside down head but thanks to a book which shows how to draw these things it turned out very well.

My art progress in school

Nobody can draw from the very beginning and most people think that talent or gift matters the most in terms of art and drawing. And eventhough it is a part of it, you must actually learn and practice how to draw. Not only how to use different tools or drawing in different techniques, but also how to draw realisticly. This costs much effort and mostly the talent to observe (which you may train as well).

5th grade (1st year in Gym, I was 10-11years old): 
art teacher 1: cool and funny guy with lots of good ideas
My art in school is an amusing proof, because I had lots of fun drawing things and I also had good ideas, but I just drew like in kindergarden, even when I was 11/12 years old. Lukily I had a nice and funny arts teacher with lots of funny themes to draw. He was more like a mentor for me and my classmates because he cared more about the willing to draw as about the quality of the drawings.

prehistoric cave painting (watercolour + charcoal)

wierd scientists discover new plant (watercolour)

galaxy (watercolour)

6th grade (2nd year in Gym, I was 11-12):
art teacher 1
So he always tried to motivate us to learn how to draw accuratley to bring our ideas on paper. We had few people in class that could draw very good and many who weren't interested in art at all and put no efford in it, but I was the only one of his students who was interested in arts, who understands arts and the meaning of it but who couldn't draw at all. 

my dream house in parallel perspective (pencil)

greek temple in parallel perspective (pencil)

7th grade (I was 12-13 years old):
art teacher 2: crazy woman with no idea of style and classic art
So at the end of the second year in Gymnasium I buyed a hiliarous videogame which claimes to teach arts to practice. And it worked. I learnt to draw trees, statues, landscapes and animals with differend (virtual) tools. Suprisingly, it worked in real life as well, as I realized in the third year. The technique to copy subjects with a grid I learnt virtually saved me as she wanted us to enlarge a picture of a comic with the same technique. I realized that I can copy things very good and that this was the first thing I learnt about drawing. (means: if you want to learn drawing, start by copying things like buildings, statues or actual drawn pictures.)

repainting of trees (candle wax + ink)

enlaging a comic panel (pencil + coloured pencils)

8th grade (I was 13-14 years old):
art teacher 3: gentle, older man who cared much about techniques
In this year I learnt much about shading with one pencil and about shade and light on objects. He also lost a very good picture of mine I put lots and lots of effort in. Drew about two hundred seperate 0,4cm long leaves of grass. But that was pretty much the only thing we did. But back then I started to learn how to draw manga.

practicing shading with only one pencil

9th + 10th grade (I was 14-16 years old):
art teacher 1 (lukily, bc he's my favourite)
So, after he didn't met me for two years, he was pretty much suprised that I could draw so good. An I became his no. 1 example of how to draw things (see the 'no. 1 example' mark on the pictures below). And all the others admired my arts, even this special girl who was his no. 1 example in 5th and 6th grade and who I admired the most for her drawing skills. Now this teacher is proud that I chose a extracurricular arts course of his for next year to improve my arts. Which means I have to do my Abitur (final exam at the end of school) in arts as well.

my own fashion boutique poster (watercolours)

drawing classmates (+teacher) (pencil) no. 1 example

drawing sketch for unique painting (pencil)

engraving a picture which ris sceary (woodcut) no. 1 example

fusion of human and animal: spiderwoman (charcoal)

 I hope this was a little bit interesting and motivating ;)
Remember that art consists of practice, a bit talent, knowledge, observing, good ideas and fun!