Art Nouveau Houseplants
I love my houseplants and many of them appear in this collage. Its style is a mix of art nouveau and the 1960s. It is the result of staring some art nouveau tiles and the works of Birger Kaipiainen. Namely, not too long time ago I went to see Birger Kaipiainen’s exhibition in Espoo, Finland.
This decorative plate was one of my favorites. I love the way the artist used textured surfaces to show off the details. And I have always loved ceramics, one of the favorite materials that I like to think of when making art. I am constantly inspired by materials and I try to imitate them by using inks, markers, and other supplies.
Creative Process
I took some photos of the phases when making the collage.
I began with india inks.
Then I randomly added some cut pieces of hand decorated papers. In the beginning, I work very systematically but for a while, I start to get impatient.
I have reached the point where I want to do something crazy. This time I just made a mess with a correction pen!
I added collage pieces and doodled with markers. Then I decided to add black acrylics to add contrasts. Looks pretty awful but I do not mind. It always looks terrible at this point.
India ink looks great over white doodles.
Here’s a detail of the finished work. I love to use thin markers, it is like sharpening a blurry image!
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Designing a Tattoo
Last spring my friend asked if I could design a tattoo for her.
A tattoo! An image that you can’t remove, at least not easily! And so personal one. That really is a challenge, I thought. I should not do it. No. Yes. I should try to!
It was my friend’s first tattoo. She had been wanting it for years. She told me she wanted a tree or a branch. That’s where the design process began.
I drew sketches and asked questions. Should it be strong, edgy, round, feminine? Full of leaves or bare? Ornamental or simple? And so on. I knew I had to trust on the design process and let each of the phase take me closer to the end result.
When the process went on, I began to draw sketches on computer. Adobe Illustrator is a great program for this kind of work.
Between computer work I printed the design and continued with handdrawn details. Finally every little detail had been finetuned with computer and the design was finished.
The finished design was presented to the tattoo artist. She changed the thinnest lines stronger so that they would last.
The tattoo is located on the arm. I am glad my friend loves it and I like it too. It represents a lot of her style but I can still recognize it to be my work of art too.
What an exciting project!