Like most art-inclined youths start off so did I - been drawing since I remember.. as a child I played alone a lot, by drawing mounds of comics on good long paper (25x60 cm maybe) strips my dad brought from some printing place he used have connections with. I remember one comic being about an anthropomorphic rat chick with huge boobs who was awesome and ninja and had lots of adventures. I also used drawing to play with my army of kinder surprise toys - sometimes I put a biiig sheet of paper on the floor and drew on it a nice little town from top view, with network of streets and a zoo and everything. Good times. I also liked to write storybooks about horses and stuff and illustrate them. And I also published my own newspaper, complete with poetry corner and a crossword.
That reminds me.. I used to write a lot of poems as a kid and a young teen. I even had a commission for a poem book in 2nd grade. My deskmates older sister gave me a 12 page exercise book and said to fill it. And so I did and got a fancy candy bar. I think they were pretty good because someone claimed that I probably had plagiated some well known Estonian writer. It was confusing to me then but now I see it as a compliment.
So that was childhood.
In my teens I became more conscious about drawing and I made a lot of hideous angsty goth/punk pen art compete with bad anatomy. And poems! Even won a 1st place in schools literary contest with my "Anarhia ei ahelda" around 6th-7th grade.
I was pretty smug about my skill because I didn't really know much kids with a better hand than mine. Except for Kala. We met at age 12 and became bff-s pretty instantly. First time in my life I met a person who was cool beyond everything I've seen in my peers before. And it was the same for her so the recognition was huge and we set on adventures together. We drew together a lot, made hilariously silly comics and collab images. One game that I remember was a gross contest. We both took a sheet of paper and went to separate corners to try to draw the grossest image possible, when we finished we compared the images and it was usually a hilarious disgusting abdomen cramping draw.
Another game we played in paint program - we drew a floorplan of our future dream apartment - you know when we will be rich rockstars and buy ourselves a huge villa. I remember that my room had a big aquarium.
I guess the display was.. "interesting" at least.
After graduation I worked for a advert design company as a decorator - making signs, business cards, car stickers and stuff. I really liked the job but I wasn't very good at it because I was sloppy and lazy. I did work hard by my own standards anyway and left the company with bitter emotions.
Then started the Tartu Art College era. Got well acquainted with acrylics and oils (ametikool only taught in gouache and watercolour) and few other techniques like collage and print-making. I started to see a pattern in my handwriting. Vivid colours and childish undertones spiced with hints to something darker. I pick up the blatant old cute/creepy contrast and try to make it interesting. That's the theory of it anyway.
About a year ago I met Vitaly, 4 years younger than me and 1 year below me in the painting department. I'm pretty positive that he has the best hand for drawing and painting that this school has seen in a while. He opened up a whole new world to me that my previous education had hardly even scraped.
His brain is constantly engaged with the troubles of the colour (it used to be form, but he has passed the drawing training in great depth and now moved on to painting) and composition and all sorts of other similar problems I was vaguely aware of and thought i understood.
He engages me in his little exercises of colour temperature, contrasts, reflections around us when we walk outside.. like - tell me what colours to you see there - yes it is ochre ..but wat else.. no, silly that's not purple at all cant you see it only looks purple because it's next to that strong warm tone! Isn't it great?? You can totally use it in that portrait commission you have, for the eyelids? , or eagerly invites me to stare at some unknown masters work on his computer screen with his eyes gleaming - Look! Look how he did THAT EPIC THING there. Genius! Just two pigments.. well maybe a little cadmium there and there but.. but look how alive and colourful it looks!!
And so on and so forth. That gives me a newfound appreciation for the classic masters and makes me see how unreachably high up they really are. And how art really is math with soul and a good creative realist painter is tons better than a photo camera. But at the same time I've bettered my understanding of modern art, and I enjoy nihilistic amateur pieces of intentional ugliness and randomness. It's 2 sides of the same coin and knowing the first gives you better understanding of the other. And then there's the philosophical side of art, that is pretty important to me personally.
I try to balance all this info and attitudes in my own works, get the right colours, the symbols and the uncomfy feel by leaving something little off tune, they way i see the distorted stories in myself. I try to avoid comparing myself to other artist but at the same time I'm pretty aware that I fit quite well in the sortiment of todays young art. It's kinda contradictory but it's just a matter of balance between conscious nods to previous creation vs originality. Is all about remixing I suppose. I think that's why I like collage and similar mixed techniques so well. Creating in any way is a process of collage and remix, nee?
There's plenty for me to ponder about and even more to work on physically so I'll leave it at that for now.
Gonna go get some asian chef with Vitaly and tomorrow go see granma in Vändra, while I fetch my last commissioned oil portrait there. I'm so over portrait commissions.. Thinking of quitting the trade.. or just switch to digital portraits only. Vitaly can make much better, dignified and valuable traditional portraits anyway.
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