My name is Astrid Nielsch, I am an on-again-off-again artist with a love for digital illustration and oil painting. I grew up in Germany – and in Brazil for a few years – but have been living in New Zealand for the past 20 years. My family background is Scandinavian and Eastern European and I have spent quite a bit of time in Scandinavia: the artists and illustrators from this part of the world have been a big influence on me, but I also love British style pen and ink work, which I learned to do when I completed the Science Fiction and Fantasy course with John Byrne at London Art College. I enjoyed this course a lot and had some success with selling and publishing my illustrations afterwards. At one point I was about to publish a children’s picture book: here is an old blog post about this project: https://www.london-artcollege.co.uk/news/2014/10/astrid-nielsch/
But then life happened, and I have taken a long forced break from creativity for the last seven or eight years. In the past, I have focused on digital art and also have a qualification in computer graphics: some years ago I came back to London Art College to do the Drawing and Painting Diploma with Paul Weaver, in order to improve my technique in traditional media, which I have also done for many years as a self-taught artist. Currently, I am doing the Landscape diploma but am having second thoughts whether this is really where I want to focus.
The “Fairies” weekend challenge was a welcome opportunity to do some fantasy themed artwork again. One of the things I enjoy about the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres is that it allows artists (and writers) to question basic assumptions about our society. I am very conscious of the messages that artistic choices can send: for instance, “fairies” are often depicted as fragile female creatures with a rather unrealistic thin and long limbed body, so for my fairy, I chose to go in the opposite direction and make it stocky and earthy. For reference, I looked at photographs of people with Down’s Syndrome, which I found online. I have worked in disability support services many years ago and have always experienced people with this condition as particularly gentle and loving: they also often have the beautifullest smiling faces.
I first created a pencil draft: the stocky build of the figure suggested to me the mushroom shape on her head, and it then seemed logical to place her under a mushroom. The wings are inspired by beetles rather than butterflies, as I felt something sturdier was needed!
I scanned the sketch and made an outline of the mushroom and figure in Adobe Illustrator. It occurred to me that the mushroom should be tilted the other way to allow space for the figure to stand under, so I used handy computer tools to change this, and I also used a geometric shape to outline the gills.
This was printed out and worked up with fineliner pens into a finished drawing. To finish off, I scanned the pen and ink drawing again and coloured it in with Photoshop, which took me a few hours of uninterrupted work.
The end result rather reminds me of Victorian printed illustrations, which I have long been a fan of! I am really pleased with this piece. It was nice to be able to get back into the “flow”: I used to be able to immerse myself in my art for hours and hours but it has been quite some time since I have had the opportunity to do so. Perhaps this piece will be the start of a new series of fairies inspired by some of the unusual plants and creepies and crawlies we find here in New Zealand. This is a website which I find inspirational by my friend Iris – https://iriscompiet.art I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I do.
Astrid Nielsch
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