The Butterfly 1 Drawing

The Butterfly 1 is from an Illustrated series of magic women animals with surrealistic, mythological, and fantasy references, mixing neoclassical paintings, Victorian Illustrations and mid-century pinup style illustration imagery. My work is inspired by botanical illustrations, surrealist paintings, cartoons and ink comics. I need to connect, explore and map social meanings, and cultural symbols. I often use and recombine essential symbols, used and understood by many cultures around the world over time. The four natural elements (fire, water, wind, earth), the cosmos and stars, time and space, the sun and moon, different types of landscapes (the desert, the jungle, the forest, the grassland), and animals, especially the ones with a strong symbolic meaning (e.g. snails, snakes, toads, etc). I play with these symbols sometimes interpreting and recombining them in a surrealistic way. The watercolours are realised with a combination of high-pigmented Japanese watercolours, and Japanese metallic watercolours, detailed with an ink nib or a fountain pen.