How the journey of the Fineliner Diaries started
It has been a while since I wrote something other than captions for the social media channels I use.
It has been even longer, since I introduced myself or my artwork and talked about how I started again drawing a few years ago and how this drawing evolved over time, taking my journey through different and fascinating stations like scanning my fineliner drawings and learning to edit them in Photoshop, mixing the (resulting) media with resin, then with resin and structure (like fine marble powder) and so on.
I talk even more seldom about the fact that I studied civil engineering instead of fine arts, or the reasons I chose to walk this path and that I even work full-time as a project manager in industrial construction, while building my creative business, also.
It took quite a journey for me to be where I am today, both in regard to my profession (moved to Germany from Romania in 2013, for a position as a civil engineer and changed a few times, before finding my place) and my passion (finding the courage to put my illustrations and fine art pieces on display).
So, for the ones of you who have kindly joined my mailing list (by the way, thank you 😊) and whom I haven’t known since kindergarten, school, from a previous place of employment, current job or argentine tango event - so nice to have you here.
My name is Leia and one of the most important topics I am passionate about are the visual arts.
Since my university degree didn’t have to do much with the visuals, but rather with the structural, I’ve let myself be guided by my curiosity when I started drawing again, a few years ago, after a long pause.
The geometric patterns that often appear in my works or the various space depth reflected through my use of hatching in different drawing angles are a reminiscence of the technical drawing courses I had to take during my university course.
I love combining these with flowers, birds, butterflies as complementary motifs and the story seems to go on, so stay tuned, if you are as curious as I am, what is going to be next 😎
I started selling my artworks - originals or illustrations through print-on-demand platforms, at first - after several debates, which friend or family member gets to take which picture/sketchbook-page and love the opportunities these options provide.
Over a year ago, Petra from #imländle (a video journal platform about the people and „gems“ of all sorts of Baden-Württemberg) offered me the opportunity to talk about my way of bringing the „reasonable“ career path (civil engineering) in balance with my chosen one - being an artist.
Here's the video of our interview, in German, with English subtitles:
https://youtu.be/aQ9XbNy0LMc
Thank you, #imländle ❤️