Natalia Pierandrei - Fantasy art by enchanted artists: faery art, mermaids & more... Tulsa, Oklahoma

I start drawing when I was very young, I'm not sure exactly what age I was. I remember my mother teached me how to draw small flowers... Drawing has always been my favorite thing to do thanks also to the wonderful artbooks, illustrated children books and comics my parents presented me since I was a little girl. I found a marvelous world inside these publications and I've always wanted to become good enough to create similar illustrations myself!
I'm basically a self-taught artist, I just taken public schools art classes and then...observation, patience, and practice, mostly. I've also learned a lot of things from art books and comics (I have a huge collection of both of them!). Observing how things look, how light falls on them, what shapes and forms they take, and then practicing drawing all of that has been the best school. Also, I like very much travelling (my second, great passion!): I think the abroad experiences gives you a lot of opportunities to grow up both as a person and artist. I spent two years of my life in Tokyo and that's probably the reason the oriental influence is so clear in my work, much of which has strong overtones of anime.

But I also find inspiration from classical fantasy themes, fairytales, miths from my country, Italy. My style is heavily influenced by that of Art Nouveau, and European comics with a penchant for gothic imagery.

I mainly use Pantone Tria markers by Letraset, Copic markers by Too.Japan, and water soluble pencils by Caran D'Ache for my illustrations, and I prefer paper being Fabriano Tecnico or Artistico. I sometimes use watercolours to accentuate certain aspects of the piece.

I work part time as a commissioned artist from late 2002, when I started showing my images on the net and I also started running a personal website nati-art.com. The web is a wonderful place to meet other artists, exchange ideas and skills and to promote your artwork all around the world!