THE NATURAL GIRL

THE NATURAL GIRL is a portrait of a girl in earth tones of sepia.
It is a digital artwork created with layers of leaves over a photograph of a young girl's face. Applied in such a way that all the layers superimposed are still visible.

The portrait is part of a collection, in which db Waterman uses a face as a starting point. Layers are applied over this to create an alienating effect, in this case photos of leaves.

db Waterman makes extensive use of her own photographs and other images from her own mixed media paintings.

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 !

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• All artworks by db Waterman
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