To go beyond the painting, but at the same time stay within your style and your imagination. That's how I once got the idea to create houses of plywood.
Hello everybody, I am Galina Graeva, a Russian artist and graphic designer. Currently, the main directions of my creativity are oil painting and wood painting.
In addition to paintings, I like to create art objects that can be held in hands and used in everyday life. Of course, I am attracted to working with natural materials, such as wood, dry leaves and pressed flowers.
The basis of the plots of many of my works is often a Russian village, colorful wooden houses that can be found everywhere in our country. This is not accidental, because I spent all my school holidays in the countryside at my grandparents.
More info: Instagram
One of my houses on the background of a rural landscape
Now, constantly living in the city, I often lack the comfort of a country house, closeness to nature. I've always loved to paint houses. One day, I wanted the country house to go beyond the picture, become closer. I can't build it but it's not enough for me to just draw it. So I decided to use laser cutting on plywood.
Let's start working
Working with wood is familiar to me, I have been doing this for almost 20 years. Any work with images begins with a sketch. First of all I create a sketch on paper.
Then I process it in a graphic editor and send an order for cutting a form of plywood.
After receiving the form, I transfer the drawing to it and I can start painting, but that's not all, because I want the house to be alive, surrounded by real trees, scenes from village life. To create this impression, I use birch bark and twigs.
I stick pieces of bark on the outlines of trees, so all the birches become real. This gives volume and naturalness to the whole image. In general, work on one house takes about a week and consists of 13 stages.
This is a painstaking, demanding precision and accuracy, but very interesting work. I really feel like a bit of a builder. The creation process brings me a lot of joy.
After the finish of the painting, an important detail is to add accessories for hanging it on the wall.
The house in the shades of red looks great among the fresh colors of the winter landscape
And so you can enjoy the unique wall decor. Your sweet house will always be with you now!
I find my houses on the streets of Russian villages and small towns, they have always inspired me
It turned out that not only I miss my lovely country house, but many people also have similar things in their lives when they have to move, sell a house, and many different reasons.
A small house among the snowdrops
Therefore, by creating my houses, I return to people a piece of warmth and tranquility and peace of rural life. I am happy that in this way I can return to someone the place where he was happy and I can please someone with my creativity.
Summer time is full of bright colors and impressions
In our country says: should we build a house? Let's draw it and live! Why not?