About Amelia
Amelia is an engineering student and a D1 cross country/track athlete at the University of Virginia. Despite the busy schedule of college life, art remains an important part of her life. In fact she believes her exposure to other disciplines makes her a better artist.
Amelia's Creative Process
Amelia believes her time as an engineer has made her a better artist, and vise versa. With the attention to detail one must have in engineering, the same applies to Amelia’s art style, which pays special attention to the lines and proportions. Amelia is driven by the challenge of making those qualities reflect reality as close as possible.
Amelia relates her creative process as a ‘transfer function.’ Amelia’s preparation for her art projects, as well as her work as an engineer includes gathering inputs. Her art inputs consist of gathering reference photos for inspiration. When trying to draw a portrait based on various reference photos, she refers to it as ‘solving a puzzle.’
“I open a drawer, so to speak, put the information in the drawer, shut the drawer, and leave it there for a while. And then I return to it. I’m a big proponent of letting my subconscious work on things. I like to look on things and procrastinate on it essentially… you let your subconscious work on it, and then you’ve actually done work on it without knowing it, and then you come back and you’re like ‘ah, ok, cool, now I know what to do.'”
Exploring and Experimenting With Her Style
In college, Amelia took an art class that forced to try drawling with india ink, rather than her usual choice of graphite. While using the new medium forced her outside of her comfort zone, she still utilized her strength from realism to make precise lines and accurate proportions. This led her to drawing a portrait of a friend and aspiring EDM producer named Ari, AKA Archimedes. The bold black lines made with india ink made his features pop, contrasted with the white and orange background. He used it for his Instagram profile picture, which resulted in more attention for Amelia’s artwork, and her new style.
