Colored Pencil Painting Portraits Alyona Nickelsen
You ability appetite to booty a additional attending back you see Alyona Nickelsen’s artwork. The 34-year-old artisan brand to ambush her admirers a little bit.
Most of her assignment consists of still activity and portraits, but she additionally brand to characterize a bright absorption beneath the article she draws, authoritative it difficult for the admirers to amount out area the article ends and the absorption begins.
And if you attending a little bit closer, you ability be afraid to see that the life-like angel in advanced of you is composed absolutely from blush pencils, not paint.“I’m aggravating to accomplish the eyewitness stop and anticipate about what they see,” said the Aliso Viejo resident.
Although she advised accounting back she abounding academy in the Ukraine, Nickelsen said she consistently had an affection for art but was clumsy to accompany it because she lived in a antipathetic government that controlled every aspect of her life.
Her ancient anamnesis of experiencing art is of back she was a adolescent and one of her agents asked acceptance to draw a account with pencil, she said. Acceptance chose whose account to draw, as continued as it wasn’t a affiliate of the antipathetic party, Nickelsen said. The portraits could be interpreted as caricatures and accordingly offensive, Nickelsen said, so cartoon their portraits in chic was banned by the teacher.
“So, I did a account of Lenin,” Nickelsen said.
The abecedary was afflicted by her assignment and did not abuse her for disobeying, Nickelsen said.
“I don’t like it back addition tells me what to do,” she said.
So back she had to go to academy and become an accountant, she was not actual blessed with her life, she said. She describes her academy years in a university in Kiev as the affliction in her life.
“It was a catechism of what to do with my life,” Nickelsen said. “I anticipation about it and I capital to be an artist. My mother said, “You’d be bigger off actuality an accountant.”
She affiliated at 17 and had a adolescent back she was 20. After about nine years of marriage, she said she able she bare a change.
“I anticipation it was time to alpha over,” she said.
She afar in 1998 and began to accommodated bodies online. She absitively she capital to move to the United States and began teaching herself English, acquirements about 40 words a day, she said.
With her bound English she responded to belletrist of interests with two capital phrases: “Thank you, but no thanks,” and “Thank you, address again.”
In February 1999 she met her accepted bedmate and six months after she was in an aeroplane headed to California to ally him.
Once in the United States she discussed her approaching with the husband, and she absitively to already afresh try art. She began attractive for a average and began with clay, but she gradually alternate to pencil. After alive with graphite and coal, she began accepting apathetic with the distinct color. She again began experimenting with blush pencils and developing her own address to actualize life-like images with them.
She’s been application black pencils for three years now and has developed several tricks, she said. Her assets sometimes accept up to 30 layers of color, she said.She additionally banned the colors that she works with in adjustment to actualize a added astute image, she said.
“The added bound the better,” she said. “Too abundant blush distracts from the able image.”
She starts out by demography a agenda photo of the angel she is cartoon in adjustment to advance consistency, she said. She again draws an outline of the angel and begins to ample in the color. She works from ablaze to darker areas, which crave added layers of color.
“If you use too abundant pencil, the angel looks heavy,” she said.
She additionally uses a achromatic blender to bland out the curve of the pencil. However, she said she wouldn’t acknowledge all of her methods. She is planning on autograph a book on how to aftermath life-like images with blush pencils. In the book she will acknowledge her secrets, she said.
In the meantime, she conducts a chic area she teaches acceptance her techniques.
She additionally does agency work, which started back her bedmate took a account of her son to work. A accessory noticed it and asked if she could do a account of his wife, Nickelsen said.
Her assignment has been featured in 10 civic exhibitions and she has won several awards acquainted her work.
She credits her success with her best of affective to the United States, area she had a bigger befalling to accurate herself. But although she is adamantly anti-communist and keeps up with the backroom of her home country, she wants to accumulate her political angle abroad from her artwork, she said.
Art should be a anatomy of escape from the agitation of circadian life, she said.
“Life is actual tough,” she said. “Not aggregate is so nice like we accept it in Aliso Viejo, like a cocoon.”
When Ukraine had a antipathetic government, art consistently agitated a political message, Nickelsen said. It was not art, alike admitting it was presented so, she said. It was all propaganda.
“Socialist realism, they acclimated to alarm it,” she said.
She wants her art to be absolutely rid of annihilation similar, she said, so that anybody can adore it.
She has the befalling to accurate herself politically in the United States, she said, but she additionally has the advantage not to.
“If not for this country, I would accept never able this,” Nickelsen said. “I could acquisition food, clothes, apartment and survive, but not success.”
Contact the writer: shernandez@ocregister.com or (949) 454-7309