Subsign: First, can you tell us a few things about yourself?
Gabriela: My name is Părpăuță Valentina- Gabriela (Gabi Vali ) and I’m 20 years old, student at visual art faculty George Enescu Iasi in 2nd year studying Graphics. I’m deeply in love with art and I started to be in this kind of world when I was a little girl at kindergarden.
I really love to express myself and my feelings in colors, in lines, on paper, canvas or on any surfaces. I experimented facepainting, and sometimes I express me as an artwork.
Subsign: What was your childhood like? Do you think your experiences from childhood have influenced your present creative endeavors?
Gabriela: When I was little, I used to spend more time at grandparents’ house. My artworks were mostly influenced by nature. I used to draw many flowers and many kinds of trees and landscapes and used bright colors. In those painting, it really shows that I loved landscapes, colors, trees and today I use nature’s elements in my artworks.
Subsign: What did you wanted to be as a grown up?
Gabriela: When I was like 6 years old, I wanted to be as vet doctor. I was obsessed with animals, especially with my cat and I wanted very bad to be a doctor for animals, but my mind had changed because art came in my life and I took the path of art eventually. And here is my cat with her portrait. I’m really proud of this work and I wanted to share my favourite kind of art, my cat, Pu ❤.
Subsign: How does your workstation look like?
Gabriela: My workstation is very diversified and complicated. I think my room is my workstation, my workshop. I’m not gonna lie, it really looks like an art studio. Papers everywhere, many drawers with arts supplies, “tons’’ of drawings and canvas on wardrobe and…some painted wall and tiny painting on them.
Anyway, to be realistic, I normally painting on my tiny easel and using for paintings acrylics colour. When I do art Uni’s homework or for graphic Challenges ( for example- Inktober), I use my desk and supplies for graphic techniques and recently I started to use graphic tablet for digital drawing.
Subsign: Do you have a work style? How would you describe it?
Gabriela: Honesty, I’m still searching in discovering my art style. I do variety of styles, it depends what I draw or painting. For example, I love to draw realistic portraits, but I really like to draw in cartoon style.
Maybe in my artworks it shows my own style,and maybe I cant see it. but I’m not convinced yet. I’m still learning and I’m feeling like one day I will touch the satisfaction to discover my autenthic and natural style.
Subsign: Can you share with us how your creative process works?
Gabriela: I want to share how I do illustration for children( traditional Style). When I start an illustration, I firstly do the sketch of composition and sketch of the characters and then the whole environment, the whole illustration.
The next step is the line art of illustration. In this case, I did an only lineart illustration for highlight any details in it and the another reason is to keep a non-coloured version of illustration.
And the final step, I did the watercolor version of illustration.
This illustration I created is from The Little Witch -children story- written by Olfried Preussler . It’s so enjoyable and funny story about a cute witch and his raven. I trully recommend to read that tiny book.
Subsign: What is your favorite work you have done so far?
Gabriela: That’s my favourite work so far because is very personal and have a deep meaning. I drew what I felt in that moment.
Everyone has experienced tough times when you feel disconected with everything and have a messed up mind and at times you don’t know what to do or believe. When I’m feeling like that, I exteriorized those negative emotions on canvas, on art, and with those ‘ugly’ emotions I can make something beautiful and letting them go. The technique I used for this work is mixed- watercolour with ink on canvas (50/70 cm).
Subsign: Who do you follow for inspiration?
Gabriela: For inspiration, I follow artists from instagram. I follow them for their originality and for their authentic style, colors and creativity, especially in illustrations and character design ( examples: Beatrice Blue, Heikala ( for watercolour technique), David Sierra Liston, ira Sluyterman van Langeweyde).
And, also, my inspiration are my experiences, my emotions and my friends, family ( especially when I want to practice portraits study).
Subsign: What advice could you give to someone starting out in the creative field of work?
Gabriela: For begginers, I’ll give one simple advice: Be patient with yourself in this process. It not gonna be easy to start to learn, but if you have the strenght and passion, if you like what are you want to learn, the process will go naturally and if somethimes isn’t working like in the way you want, don’t give up, and try again- The mistakes have their own meaning- to learn from them and to do better and better.
Subsign: If you would a super power, what would it be?
Gabriela: That is a very interesting question. I always wanted to have the power of speaking with the animals, to know everything about them, what they do, what they think and to communicate with them about their perspective of life, and to learn how to live like them.
Subsign: Can you recommend for our readers a book, a song and a movie?
Gabriela: Recently, I started to read a very powerful in action book, Warcross ( Vol.1), and Wildcard ( Vol.2 ). The book has cyberpunk style (futuristic cities, crimes, love , tragedies, game battles) with a very strong action and characters. I highly recommend those volumes.
My favourite song so far, I listened it when I’m feeling down and It helps my mood to be rised up – FM-84- Running in The Night – the genre of this song is retrowave.
Movie- Leon: The Professional- My favourite movie so far and I did a portrait of the main character- Mathilda.
Subsign: If you could throw any kind of party, what would it be like and what would it be for?
Gabriela: I’m not in the kind of wild party, with loud music and a lot of people and staying late until sunrise. So, I want to throw a tea party.
Subsign: What famous people would you invite to the party and why?
Gabriela: I would invite fairy tail characters instead famous people. In fact, I would invite, in a fantasy world, because in the real one is impossible, the creator and the illustrator of the story The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter (1866- 1943). In that story, she created little character, like tiny rabbits family and it will be so funny and pleasant to have a little tea party with those characters and with her in a natural and quiet place with the sounds of birds and the sound of a river.
If you know an artist that should be in the spotlight, contact us at maria@subsign.co.
Thank you Gabriela for being a part of our Spotlight!
For more of Gabriela‘s work, you can follow her work on the links: Gabriela on Instagram.
