Self Care

Children's Illustration - December 2018

Portrait of a Caroler

These drawings were made as an exercise to see how I would approach the illustration style of a storybook. It's one of my wishes to illustrate one some day and I had some free time before Christmas to play around with some watercolor and colored pencil. 

These were made mostly from imagination, but I did use some reference for the iceskating one and the four carolers, I did have some trouble with the latter one as I feel the color cheme could have been different or narrowed down to a smaller palette with one or two tones. As you can see, I still have a fondness for lettering and doodling words around my drawings.

Iceskating

Warming Up

Carols

Iceskater, Happy New Year

More info in the last part of this video from my Youtube channel.

Thank you for viewing,

Meruna.

The Red Sketchbook

 

A visual diary.

Thanks for viewing!
Meruna.

Artist Bio / Biografia Artistului

Hello, Internet!

I will be posting as Meruna (a shorter alias of my name, Miruna Elena Popescu) to try and document my journey as a freelance illustrator who is just starting out, having finished art school in the past year.

This post is basically an introduction and quick bio of my life as an art maker and how it all started out.
 
I was born and raised in Romania, and never left it, yet!
I'm a Pisces, born in '92, and my personality type is INFJ, if you believe in that sort of stuff :)
Mine is a typical story of "I liked to draw and my mom encouraged me to do so by buying me crayons and watercolors and helping me draw my dolls' bodies." So I liked to draw fashion sketches like a typical girly-girl who liked the Spice Girls and dressing up.

So I did that until about 3rd grade when I took some local art classes on and off for a few years, just an hour every Saturday with a teacher mainly interested in abstract art, just having fun with colors and compositions. After a break from that I just copied stuff from calendars in my spare time or vacations.
When I decided to apply to an art specialized high-school, I was tutored for a about a year and learned to draw still-lifes and paint compositions with characters.

In high-school I studied painting, because graphics weren't available, even if they would have been more suited to me. Dabbled a bit in fashion for a while there, too. I discovered graphic art after seeing an exhibition in my hometown (of Alina Rosca and Mircia Dumitrescu) and fell back in love with drawing, got a liner and studied the works of Durer and Gustave Dore. It was great!

So I applied for Graphics at the University of National Art in Bucharest. Learned a lot of great things there, met my people, and shifted my view of the world. I started in 2011 but finished in 2016 - no masters degree, but I took a year and a half off because of health and personal reasons. So I had two teachers, two sets of classmates and a bigger experience which I don't regret. Made a book for my BA, maybe I'll talk about that in another post.

So that's pretty much it, for the past months I've been getting my bearings, figuring out my style and what to do next and how to make money from it. 
 
I have an online art shop on Etsy with original art, some available for digital download, which means it is cheaper and faster to receive, no need to wait weeks for the post and you can print it instantly at home or at your local print shop!  Also, I’m available for comissions, so don’t hesitate to contact  me if you’d like to give a special gift to someone (a portrait, caricature, realistic drawing of ther favourite car/flower/animal etc.)

Join me on my journey as a freelance illustrator! 

I post every other day on Instagram. 

Meruna.