I Carry You In My Soul - new artwork and first video!

I Carry You In My Soul – new artwork and first video!

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This new artwork called I Carry You In My Soul is quite special, as it was the first time that I filmed how I made it. I haven’t filmed the whole process, but focused on the painting of the figure.

I started out with a background of a large monoprint (A3 size) that I had created before, and then worked with acrylic paint and colored pencil on top of the print to create the woman carrying the child. This is an image that I have used before in a drawing with the same name, and it’s such a tender and at the same time powerful image that I wanted to paint it again (and this one might not be the last either). The woman is carrying her baby, which to me is also a symbol for the experience of life itself. Her long hair blowing in the wind symbolizes protection and shelter, that’s why it’s flowing like a kind of canopy above the baby’s head.

Painting it took me quite a while, since I’m not used to film while I am creating. You do have to think of not leaning over your artwork and to keep the painting in frame, so that can be a little distracting sometimes. After I had made the figure I was quite happy with it, the only thing was that I thought I should make her stand out a little more against the monoprinted background, which is quite busy as you can see. Then again, I didn’t want to lose the details in the background either, so it was a bit of a dilemma. And so it was great that I could go to the Creative Campground, the art related Facebook group I started a while ago, and ask my friends’ opinions! Most people agreed that I should go for it and so I added a blue glaze on the left side to create extra depth.

And so you can now watch ‘the making of’ 😉 on my brand-new YouTube channel! I had a lot of fun making the video, learning so many new things like how to shoot, which camera angle to choose, picking some nice background music and how to edit. I will definitely continue to develop this further and plan to make videos on gelli printing as well.