I’m loving these lazy weekends where it’s too cold to venture outside… brrr.. better just have a productive day indoors in my toasty apartment with a hot cocoa and catch up on some illustration.
I didn’t have to venture too much further than my dressing table for inspiration on this one. These are some of my favourite scents and each of the bottles are so pretty! I’ve to use all of these up before buying any more. One for almost every day of the week – love them all!
Gerda & the Reindeer. The Snow Queen lllustration by Lili Cabena
Mixed Media
I wanted to create a drawing that evoked that other worldliness depicted in the fairytale books I had growing up. At least that’s how I remember them – marvellous and magical – children can get so much more from the illustrations in a book than an adult can, and sometimes years later, just seeing that illustration again can take you back to how you felt when you first read that story.
My favourite fairytale was The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson. This is one of Hans Christian Anderson’s longest tales, unusual in that almost all of it’s main characters are female. It’s a story that has been illustrated beautifully many times by Dulac, Rackham, Milo Winter, Eleanor Vere Boyle etc. Those are some of my favourites. But who were the illustrators of the humble fairytale books we read growing up… they probably weren’t well known at all and yet would have approached this subject in their own way despite the many great artists having covered it already in their own style. The Snow Queen is topical at the moment with the release of Disney’s Frozen, which I am excited to see.
This is the latest painting I’ve been working on. I’m really enjoying working with the geometric trend at the moment and thought I’d mix this with some summer bright hues, earth tones and neons that would work well in any room as a piece of wall art.
There are so many digital prints around of this type of thing but I loved the challenge of starting out from scratch with pencil and compass, getting the geometry right and then working out the colour hue combinations, adding metallic copper as a final touch.
Option 1: Green Base
I painted this with the intention of it hanging on a wall in portrait format with the green hues at the base. Until my boyfriend commented that obviously it was meant to be hung horizontally as it looked better that way right?! Well now I’m confused…which way up does this painting look best? Please vote for option 1, 2 or 3! Thanks for voting!
Option 2: Red Base
Option 3: Landscape
Tomorrow, Day 13: ‘Comic’… coming soon!
Lili Cabena 