I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
William Blake

I remember I've read sometime ago, here in my friends list page, someone who was saying she knew that artists use almost all the time references and to know them, could finish the magic of an art work.
My opinion is that the problem is not the public to know from where your ideas come from but how to transform these references in something that express so deeply your thoughts, your own style, recreating what was already created and changing it in something new to everybody's eyes.
You won't end the magic if this happens. It will be transformed.

Like I told you sometime ago, I've been working in old fanarts I've started for some scenes of an specific chapter of Redblaze(or Bluerain)'s More than Memories(for a while now ), and it's being hard to finished them because, apart from real life's problems, new ideas are always coming to my mind and I'm always putting the old projects aside. But this time, the idea for a new fanart that came to me was for this same chapter and I had it while I was reading a "Rolling Stones" magazine few months ago and I've watched a jeans advertising.

And today I'm showing to you how Calvin Klein helped me to make this Ron and Hermione's moment comes alive.
I hope you like it.

I'm posting today a project of four drawings I did for Rupert Grint’s Birthday, with no sites asking me for, a thing I should do for him and by myself so grateful I’m still by his gesture of to sign one of my drawings and saying he already had saw it.
I need to do this.

Gladly IceCreamman(RG.us) gave me the pleasure to host them in their gift that was sent to him, with a message also wrote by me.

“Life is what happen to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
John Lennon

As you’re getting older you also learn that sometimes life looks like a great mosaic made from little moments, people and things you love, all of them put together and forming who you are.
Although we’re apart by many things, different countries, cultures, languages, life stories, age and so on, I like to think that you and I have some parts of “our mosaics” formed by the same pieces: our love for this character, Ron Weasley, for art, music, movies and these girls from this site, Ice Cream Man, that support your career, working everyday to bring it to many fans and are great real friends of mine.
My first idea for my gift of this year, was to draw all the photos that were taken for Blag magazine, but unhappily life also makes you leave by its way lots of things you planed.
I think they are the blank spaces of the “mosaic”, where we couldn’t find the right piece to fill it, or even pieces lost with the passing of time.
These drawings I finished, look a little different of what I use to do. I made them while I was rediscovering a great artist that I admire, Dave McKean, a comic illustrator that has been working for a long time with the wonderful writer, Neil Gaiman.
I made them by his influence but, of course, in my way and capacity.
All of them are handmade, using different techniques: pastel, gouache, dry watercolor pencils.
Funny that while I was working, I discovered that this artist collaborated for the conceptual art of “Harry Potter and the Prisioner of Azkaban” and “Goblet of fire”.
Another common piece.
The lyrics I used came to me always with some relation with you.
Just one of them, “Good Riddance” by Green Day appeared at my iPod, while I was working and typed the world Life.

I made a “little change” and I think it turned perfect for a guy that is completing 21 years old.
Perfect to add to these drawings that I hope you could have with you, forever, as part of your “mosaic”.

Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.

Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.

So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.

It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.

So take the photographs
and still frames in your mind.

Hang it on a shelf
of good health and good time.

Tattoos of memories
and dead skin on trial.

For what it's worth,
it was worth all the while.

It's something unpredictable
but in the end is right.
I hope you’re having the time of your life."

Happy Birthday!

Lilly

August 2009

Great part of my friends already saw HBP movie by now, so it’s time to show to you a drawing I made specially for today, and I’m certain you will have fun to imagine Rupert in a way that, after watching him doing brilliantly Ron Weasley’s part, we all are sure now, we'll never see him in real life, maybe in a film…

When Karo, a staff member of Rupert-Grint.us(Ice Cream Man), asked me at the end of May if I could make a drawing as a surprise the others staff members and all the fans of the site to celebrate Ice Cream Man's 5th birthday, I didn't think twice.
Ice Cream Man site is part of my daily life, where lots of my online friends are. We don’t only share the same love for Rupert Grint but also for many other things. It always seems that the talk starts on him and ends with all of us speaking about music, books, movies, food, everything.
It is a place where Rupert’s fans also know that behind my art there’s a person, because I was always respected there not only as an artist that can eventually contribute to the site, but also as human being.
So, my first idea for the drawing came quickly for sure: to draw Rupert as an old fashioned ice-cream man, which was approved by Karo immediately.
The idea developed to the one that I’m giving to you today, a drawing based on the magnificent work of one of the most wonderful illustrators of all times, Norman Rockwell, and his work for the covers of the Saturday Evening Post.
Although it might look simple, it was hard to do it. Everything handmade including the fonts, like it was by the time of the magazine and also doing a foreshortening drawing, is never the most easy thing to do, but I really hope you enjoy it.
It was made with all my heart as I know their work is done there every day in the site!


Happy Birthday, Ice Cream Man!

"The new love drives out the old”
Anonymous

I’m not sure if this is totally true.
Not for all the cases.
I heard The Beatles for the first time when I was twelve years old and became instantly a beatlemaniac.
After them, a hundred new ones, new passions came and I still love them.
I got married with my first great love and we had three kids.
I only felt that, through the years, my heart was getting bigger and bigger with plenty space for everybody.
It happens here, all the time!
Friends that are here with me since the beginning and I know will also be after the new ones that are always coming.
Old friends like Monica, one of my oldest friends at LiveJournal who is celebrating her birthday on July 6th and to whom this picture is dedicated.
We discovered together this new love for Jamie and Claire from Diana Gabaldon’s series "Outlander", but we both know we’ll never give up from our old and great love, Ron and Hermione.

To make a fanart for “Outlander” was a different experience. I came to Ron and Hermione after the movies, so it was easy to picture them, as you know I do, when I’m reading their stories or making fanarts.
Now, with Jamie and Claire, their images are not so clear and definitive to me, it’s like I’m looking for references every time I’m reading them and for me, being a portraitist, this could be a good or a bad thing.
I’m trying my best to have this in my favor, so, I have for this one “very famous” references, and I decided not to confirm them (but would be funny if you give your opinion), because, although this is the most closer I have in mind when I’m reading the books, you know, they can change a little in the future.
Yes, I’m planning to do few more for these books that is my great new love.
To make fanarts for this story is even harder than to do for the Harry Potter series because of the millions of details, that you face while reading them, that aren’t only fruits of a great author’s imagination, but also historical facts.
I still have so much to study and research but this is the great challenge in to work for them.
And if you never read them, please don’t wait more!
Hurry up and do so!
I know your heart will also have space for this new love!

Those of you, who have been part of my f-list for some time have already read me talking many times about coincidence, synchronicity or any other name we could call strange things that happen in our lives.
And you know how many times I'm used to live those moments.
So, this fanart doesn't have a different story, and I'll tell it to you now.

I'm kind of obsessed with the image of Ron and Hermione in his Hogwarts bed since I read the fanfic that made me well, obsessed with them, Emmilyne’s "Of Hearts and Heroes".

I already did one almost two years ago based in a Beatles song, called "Golden Slumbers".

[link]

But I’ve decided to make one of them on it again, when I saw a photo of Ron/Rupert from HBP movie lying in Ron's bed smiling and there was an amazing red fabric behind it.
So my first idea was to use in this art a technique already used by many artists much before PhotoShop was invented. One that I learn to love on my studies about art history, when I found out about the work of the great pop artist Richard Hamilton and later, in the works of some comics illustrators like Bill Sienkiewicz.
The collage.

I found out a very blurred reference for the pose of the characters (that ended doesn't helping me much) and started to make some sketches.
When I finally thought one of them was fine to start to color, I was giving it the first brushes when a video were Rupert Grint was interviewed in a golf camp surfaced on internet.
On it the reporter asked what was the most important rock group in the history for him.
Although I disagree with Mr. Grint, I felt surprised when he answered "Oasis" and I looked down to the paper and the perfect name for my art appeared so clear in my mind:
"Wonderwall!"

Well, you will find out why when you watch it!

The theme for it, they both together in the "four-poster bed" was something I wanted to draw since I started on fandom and my opinion is that this could hardly happen in the canon world. But in fandom we have many examples like the one I mention above.
And again for my surprise, during the days I was working on the fanart I discovered an incredible fanfic, "The First Two Times" by Potterhead37, placed hours right after the last battle in "Deathly Hallows", where they both share Ron's bed in Hogwarts and have their first moment of intimacy.
It was the story I had in mind when I was creating the art.
I love the thought of them being the comfort for each other in those moments, but also surrendering to the feelings they just found out were mutual.
And wanting to be only one forever!

So, I had everything when I finished the art last January: the theme, the name, the song, the perfect story for it, I even asked for "Potterhead37" permission to post the links of her story, but I don't know, I just didn't had the feeling to post it.

Maybe because my adult art always has a light and subtle sensuality, and I felt that maybe this one had a "little more" than the usual. I though that I went literally a little bit "lower" on it!
And you already know how people here, at DeviantArt, think about Ron and Hermione as adults.
Maybe for them the image of the couple at "Deathly Hallows" epilogue are of two 11 years old boy and girl, married taking their two kids to the Hogwarts train station!
And these thoughts kept chasing me till the last week, when I open the file with its image while I heard Oasis at a live show on TV here in the city I live, São Paulo.

Playing, of course, "Wonderwall!"


************

For the record: at the day of the final battle in Hogwarts, May 2nd 1998, Hermione ( The Brunette witch) was 18 years, 7 months and 13 days old as Ron (The redhead wizard) was 18 years, 2 months and 1 day old.

SO, THIS IS AN ADULT WORK WITH ADULT CHARACTERS!

This drawing was made in a 180gr A4 size Canson paper using, gouache, watercolor pencils, pastels and collage.

You can find the story I was refering above

Here
[link]

and

Here
[link]

At both sites you need to be registered.