Featured artist: Timone
Timone, is a Spanish artist, and writer, who has a huge range of experience with drawing and painting. She focus on Illustration on advertising, patterns and animal Illustration among others. She also took the time out of her work to share her artistic knowledge with kids. Actually belongs to the community of artist that Tostadora represents.
And today we are proud to introduce you Timone as one of our favourite Gourmet artists and to share her interests and likes and dislikes about design world as well.
- What is the main aspect that defines your style of painting? Or why do people follow your art?
Over the years Ihave been changing my style a lot, as natural evolution of search and learning. Maybe my style, nowadays, has a mixture of surrealism, fantasy and children’s Illustration. But if you think about it, they all have something in common. It is the presence of nature and the importance of color.
I like to turn everyday situations into scenes that could be part of a story. It is not that i make an effort, it is only that I see them in thsi way. And to express feelings or experiences I make use of nature. Nature is present in 99% of my work. On the other hand color is my passion. For me it is more important than the drawing or the technique used. I am not satisfied with using the colors straight form the tubes. The reason why people follow my art is a mistery to me.
«I try to create everything possible through mixtures,
I create my own oils from pure pigments and try to get pigments from everywhere, rock, spices, plants.»
- A site or workplace where you find inspiration.
Ideas come at the most unexpected time. Reading, waiting for the bus, in a conversation or working in my garden. Imagination is my way to face the world. Creativity is what shapes my imagination and turns it into something tangible, it always takes place in my studio.
I had about 7 different studios over the years, depending on where I lived, I remember all of them in a very special way. The place where I paint, whatever it is, becomes my favorite place at that time. It has always mattered to me more what I am doing tna where I am doin it.
- How would you describe your creative process?
Sketches, sketches and more sketches. And the choice of colors always clear since I’ve conceptualize my idea, that’s it, I visualize the image with colors and not with others. I start pencil until I candefine the style, then I make a sketch with different compositions and possible points of view, and when I have it, I start doing a little test of color. Once the idea is defined, I prepare the support, I saw the board and print if it is an experimental watercolor. or I saw slates to prepare the frame and nail the fabric to make it the way I like.
- Does your interest in art come from childhood or is it something that you have developed overs years?
I started painting exactly as everyone else, as a child. But at 7-8 years old I wanted to know more and I started oil painting classes, I held it for 8 years, from there I went to school fine arts and crafts to the art school in my town and then studied for three years in the faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona. On the way back I continued with more courses both painting and graphic design. Of course there have been moments of frustration and doubt. But I could never leave. I do not understand my life without art.
«I think in a world sometimes so destructive, to be able to create a little beauty is an obligation for me.»
- Currently if a freelance designer is struggling to break through and kick of their career, what would you recommend them?
First, you should consider whether this is your passion. A passion is what makes you lose track of time and enjoy the process, not the ending result. Because it is a hard, difficult and a lonely profession. You are on your own, in your studio, your ideas and your abilities. The results may take years to reach, but personal satisfaction can improve daily.
There is another very important part, I don’t get on well with, that is promotion. It took me years to make the first exhibition in my city, by 2002. And until 2009 I dared not raise my job to the network. I was very embarrassed. But in the end it is the only way that someone finds you, and all these public displays give results in the form of orders and sales.
- Most of your works are made with watercolors. In your opinion, which are the pros and cons of drawing paper or drawing on digital?
Well, each technique has its advantages. I work a lot with digital media but I relegate my assignments as a graphic designer. It’s clean, fast, versatile design .. but even when I start a design I do it with a pencil.
For my personal work I especially like wet techniques, oil and watercolor, by the process. It is something tactile, natural, it allows you to create textures that you can then touch and that with the digital process it is lost. There is a part in painting which is very interesting , it is the errors, or the effects of the mixture of paint and water. These errors and these effects make the piece unique, unrepeatable, and often beautiful. It is true that in watercolor there is no margin for error as in digital painting and if you want to change something it means to start from the beginning.
- Any project you’ve always wanted to make but you have not encouraged or able to do.
There are plenty. I have had in mind for about 15 years, something that includes a large living tree .. then I return to it every few years I change it , I make it bigger…
But I have some small projects. Right now I have started a series of designs, covers for classic books. But I love to design the cover of a contemporary novel.
Maybe soon!