I happened upon an animal artist today and thought that I
would write about her, mostly because I have only done one artist of the week
post. (shrug)
The artist is Ester Curini. She is Italian, paints in
acrylic, and she is self-taught. As you can see, she is hyper realistic,
however not in a “might as well put up a photograph” type of way. She has a
slight stylization that I like.
In an interview for the International Artist.com magazine, Ester describes her inspiration,
design, and working processes. She says that for each work she tries to capture
the energy, essence, and spirit of each animal. Ester starts her process by spending hours
with her subject. She says that sometimes hours are spent out in fields waiting
for that one magical connection. She then uses photoshop to crop and edit her
photograph. In the interview Ester explained that although she uses photography as a guide in her paintings, that her paintings are just that, pure paintings.
Once the subjected is photographed, and the desired composition created, Ester will
then draw a basic outline of the animal on a fine grain canvas. She usually starts by painting the eyes first. The eyes she paints are by far my favorite. She likes to isolate the
animal by using a white, blank background but then will paint within the eyes the
actual background of the original photograph. For example, in her painting Jane Doe, Ester painted the woods that
the doe was grazing in and even her own figure.
After the eyes are finished, Ester will continue finishing the figure of
the animal using script liner brushes. You can truly see the amount of time,
dedication, and effort on her part. Jane
Doe alone took her three months to complete.
This is one thing that I need to learn, time is okay. School tends put high "finishing" demands on a student, which has its pros and cons, but due to those demands I tend towards a habitual need to complete
complete complete, now now now. Sometimes I need to remember that it takes time and that is okay.
If you would like, you can see more of Ester’s works here.
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