THE MODEST GIRL

Modesty is a character trait or behaviour in which people portray themselves or their own merits as smaller than they are.

This expressionistic colourful portrait is built up with layers; a drawing of a girl's face, pieces of previously made original acrylic paintings and pieces of collages.
The acrylic paintings are mainly street art and pop art-like artworks, which are used as background for a painting. I first take photos of these to save them for digital editing. The same goes for the collage artworks. All the layers are brought together in photoshop and edited to the final digital result; a totally new artwork in the form of a portrait.

This artwork is offered by db Waterman

I remembered that as a young girl I so much liked to cut images from magazines to paste them into school agendas, scrapbooks and even on my bedroom door. Add to this the fascination I always had for walls filled with old posters, flaking paint, scrappy billboards and weathered paint, it opened an unexpected door for completely new opportunities. Completely unintended I found a new way of working, I felt pleasurably and comfortably at home in. What started out as copying old walls with worn out posters has grown into many series of new visual storytelling. Not simply just eclecticism, but bringing together many seemingly incoherent story lines into one completely new story, my own personal story. Initially it lacked the one thing that is important to me, the transparency that normally only is possible with the use of watercolor. The unforgiving layering of transparent watercolors is a challenge I would not want to miss and after a lot of trial and error I finally succeeded in getting the collages as transparent as a watercolor. Every layer of paper, oil, acrylic, pencil, crayon, ballpoint, watercolor, ink, charcoal and whatever else I use, remains visible in the artwork. You can imagine it made me feel the queen of the ball !

Learn more about db Waterman?

• All artworks by db Waterman
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