“The Spirit of Spring” (2020) Drawing by Fefa Koroleva
One-of-a-kind works of art are also known as “OOAK” artworks. This means that every work of art is unique and there will never be another identical one.
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When I started to draw this story, I had have a draft title for the sketch «A dog in flowers” and I had planned to draw a Russian borzoi. Everything was going according to this plan. Except the flowers. Even then I should suspect that everything was not going according to this way. The doggy said that the flowers didn’t suit him and[. ]
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When I started to draw this story, I had have a draft title for the sketch «A dog in flowers” and I had planned to draw a Russian borzoi. Everything was going according to this plan. Except the flowers.
Even then I should suspect that everything was not going according to this way. The doggy said that the flowers didn’t suit him and that he needed something so magical, about the wind and the sun, about flying. But he didn’t show that he just was pretending an ordinary dog.
His proportions and face were changing constantly. And it’s very strange when you’re drawing within the lines of the sketch, but to get an unexpected result. And also dog hair . I couldn’t draw it, in spite of I have drawn a lot of borzois and I know how to convey their hair, to show a silky wave of hair. I know them tactilely, because I used to have these dogs in my life. But here, whatever I did, this dog changed everything.
Until I suspected it wasn’t a dog at all. It was the spirit! And then white butterflies appeared around. And when I saw the butterflies, I fully realized who had come into my artwork.
I associate spring with a new beginning, a new life and a chance to breathe deeply after winter in order to spread my wings and fly. I felt that it’s the spirit of spring.
The artwork is signed on the front and provided with a certificate of authenticity.
If you’d like any more information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Drawing in mat . Size of mat 40x30cm
The artwork is signed on the front and provided with a certificate of authenticity.
If you’d like any more information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
About this artwork: Classification, Techniques & Styles
A strongly tinted liquid or paste that is used to mark paper or other printable materials. The design is done manually with a slab, feather, brush, or straightener.
Paint using traditional pigments mixed with synthetic resins.
Drawing made with a colored stick. It consists of pigments, a charge and a binder. A distinction is made between dry pastels (soft or hard) and fatty pastels (oil or wax).
Figurative and colorful painting having taken the liberty of including all forms of art without border of cultural genre and geographic origin, without hierarchy of values between high and subculture.
Drawing is a technique of visual representation on a flat support. The term “drawing” designates both the action of drawing, the resulting graphic work, and the shape of any object. It is also a representation on a surface of the shape (and possibly the light and shadow values) of an object or figure, rather than their color. There are a large number of drawing techniques: “Linear drawing” represents objects by their outlines, edges and some characteristic lines; beyond this limit, the drawing develops by representing the volume by shadows, often by means of hatching, incorporates colors, and joins, without clear transition, the painting.
5 Facts to take you deeper into Botticelli’s “Allegory of Spring”
Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, or Allegory of Spring, late 1470s or early 1480s. Tempera on panel.
Sando Botticelli’s Primavera, or Allegory of Spring, painted in the late fifteenth century, is one of the most admired, yet controversial, paintings in the world. A perennial celebration of the most vibrant season, it evokes the spirit of spring through its depictions of figures from classical mythology. Standing in a grove, from left to right, we can see Mercury, whom we recognize from his winged sandals; The Three Graces; Venus as the mistress of her domain; Flora, who is scattering flowers all around; and Chloris in the act of being ravished by Zephyrus (their union will transform her into Flora). Cupid, meanwhile, hovers above Venus.
The painting, while pleasant to look at, conceals a complex meaning that, even to this day, scholars are still not in agreement about. Daniela Parenti, the curator of the medieval and early-Renaissance art at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, walked us through these fun and enlightening facts about Allegory of Spring.
Detail of Cupid surveying the scene with his arrow drawn
1. The characters in the painting were only identified in the late 19th century
While Botticelli was fairly popular and revered during his lifetime, he fell out of favor in the following century. With the exception of sporadic mention in art history texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he was mostly forgotten up until the second half of the nineteenth century. Giorgio Vasari, in his biography of Botticelli, whom he looked down on, recalls a painting hanging at the Villa Castello matching Allegory of Spring, and described it together with the Birth of Venus. It was only exposed to the public at the Galleries of the Academy in 1853, and was moved to the Uffizi Gallery in 1919.
After the public could finally appraise the painting firsthand, came the attempts to identify the characters. Adolf Gaspary, who was a philologist well-versed in Renaissance literature and not an art critic, first saw a link between Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring and a poem by Agnolo Poliziano titled “Rusticus,” which celebrated country life and the renewal of seasons.
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The Birth of Venus, c. 1485.
2. Botticelli painted many facets of Venus
In Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring, Venus is the mistress of her domain and is wearing regal garb while dispensing love, harmony, and the regenerative power of nature. She wears a blue gown and a red drape, the same colors worn by the Virgin Mary, but reversed.
By contrast, in The Birth of Venus, he drew inspiration from Greco-Roman statuary depicting Venus in the nude, whether in the act of covering herself in a sign of modesty or as part of anadyomene, which means “rising from the sea.” He also follows the mythical narrative that nymphs dressed Venus after she reached the shores of Cyprus.
In Venus and Mars, which portrays the two deities reclining, he reaches a happy medium: while her gown is regal and intricate, to the point that her braids become indistinguishable from her jewelry, it is draped in a way that showcases her curves, and the bare foot that peeks from the gown suggests her sensuality.
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Venus and Mars, c. 1485.
