In the first post, I briefly described my creative session with children Doroteja (8) and Domas (5). In this and future posts, I will tell you how the drawings by these children, their interpretations and photographs inspired me to create a variety of ideas for a Neverland Portrait.
I call my paintings portraits. At first glance, however, they are more reminiscent of fairy-tale illustrations than portraits. In a traditional portrait painting, the human face and body occupy almost the entire composition of the painting. I thought that perhaps parents would be more interested in a Neverland Portrait in which the child’s face occupies a larger part of the composition.
I got inspired for this idea from these two photos, in which Doroteja poses with a surprised face expression…
…and from this drawing created by both of us. Doroteja started this picture by drawing a meaningless abstraction of lines. When I had to complete the drawing (such rules of the game), I saw a horse’s head in this abstraction – I painted the nostrils, the eye, the ear. When I shared my discovery with Doroteja, the girl replied that the drawing was more like a bird’s beak to her. Very well! What she saw reflects her inner world.
So I decided to draw a composition of a Neverland Portrait in which Doroteja looks at the fairy-tale bird in amazement. First, I decided to make the bird bigger than Doroteja, because in reality there are no birds of this size, so the girl could only meet it in a fairy tale.
I was considering how to properly include other chaotic lines from the “beak” drawing. Or maybe not include them at all because the composition may look too messy. I decided it would be more fun to use such a playful clutter of lines. And what could that mess on the beak mean? Maybe something in a snap? After such a chain of thought, I had the idea to draw a snake and a grain straw, which would be like the food of a fairy-tale bird.
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