Nina Chakrabarti is a London based illustrator, She was born in 1970 in Calcutta,India.She achieved a Bachelors degree in Central Saint Martins and a MA in the Royal College Of Art. Although she grew up in Calcutta in the 1970s her mother was English so she was exposed to lots of western books, music and art as well.
Nina Chakrabarti's illustrations are quite simple. With just a few pen strokes she finds a way to put a sense of joy and wonder into her drawings. She is highly inspired by fashion and this lead to the creation of her 'My Wonderful World Of Fashion' books.The books are aimed at children but after being published they found fans of all ages interested in them all around the world. Nina's drawings always seem personal whether they are for commercial purposes which include Marks & Spencer, Vogue and The New York Times or not.
Unlike most artists in a Interview Nina expressed how she moved to England from India in her teens with literally not much at all but a couple of books.She spoke about how strange it was to leave everything she knew behind and start again with virtually nothing. She then went on to say how in that time in her life she became fascinated with how people collect things as they travel through life and how in England at that time one of the popular things to do was to go to jumble sales and car boot sales to rummage for books,clothes and other bits and bobs. She was looking for things herself there when she became drawn to the way people present their personal belongings some presenting them neatly and others would have them thrown about in heaps of piles. Then much later when she began art school, she started to photograph stalls at car boot sales when she saw an arrangement that caught her eye. She stated that she believes this is the stem for the composition of disparate objects.
Nina's influences come from all over most of her detail and decoration is influenced most by Indian arts and crafts. Her biggest influence is a Russian Illustrator called Ivan Bilibin who was working in the early 1900's her fascination with his work started when she was very small growing up she had a book he had produced called The Firebird which she described to have incredible skill and beautifully vivid colours.
For this information I looked at her website which was really brief so I research on and found a interview she had with the societeperrier website which is mainly for art and artist reviews the full interview is accessible here.
This image is one over many that features in this project for i want you magazine called 'Voodoo Queens'. I want you magazine is a art and design magazine designed and published by dumb eyes studio it features artworks by upcoming talents & overlooked artists from around the world. Each photograph in this series features a different illustration design on the faces of the models inspired by the art and culture of voodoo.
Voodoo is a spirited experience of mystery and revelation. It arrived from Africa on the shores of the Jamaica as a healing tradition. Soon enough though a darker version of Voodoo was born, inflicting pain and suffering to the enemies. This is the Voodoo that was smuggled to the island of Haiti and later to New Orleans. Voodoo was also very women-centred and graphically rich, and an everlasting source of inspiration for musicians, writers, painters, tattoo artists, graphic designers and illustrators.In this series of photography's there are only images of women this could relate to the tradition of voodoo and how it was very women centred.
The style in which the models hair is seems to me like Nina was also trying to link it into a traditional African mask with orange hair coming out of it.I think her design on the face of the model relates more to a Indian art and crafts design rather than a 'Voodoo' inspired design as in the mask below here the pattern on the mask is relatively simple compared to the detailed Nina version.
The artist has used a variety of formal elements to design this outcome on the face of the model we have a selection of different lines such as curved and wavy, The smaller circles at the base of the face portray a bumpy texture as I'm assuming this illustration is an R enactment of a 3D mask.
There isn't any extra ordinary colour that Nina has added to this photograph she has kept the original colours of the photograph and just added her black pattern on the face.
Their are lots of different patterns on this piece as well on the face it is almost divided into a line of symmetry where both sides of the face have the exact same pattern as each other which I think is effective because again it looks like she was trying to produce a 2D illustration of what a 3D mask would look like.
The model in this piece is quite plain as in her expression is very blank maybe this is a scare tactic as her eyes are coloured black so maybe she is possessed and ready to pounce. I think all Nina was trying to do here was sort of modernise the traditional opinions of voodoo, So what it would be like if witch doctors were walking around as casual people.
There wasn't much information about the meaning of this piece and the concept just who it was made for and the company name.To make this piece however I think it was relatively easy I think Nina set up a photo-shoot of some women and then printed the images and worked on them individually using pens such as a fine liner or a Biro pen.
When I first saw this piece it reminded me of Geraldine Georges another illustrator who produces drawings on images and also I found this selection of photos to be quite scary and disturbing mainly because of the negative stereotype of violent or aggressive that face tattoos give out also because her eyes were pure black which usually suggests evil.
Overall I Like the piece mainly because of the amount of detail in the facial pattern and because of the composition of the entire piece.
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