The Artist
Art and Life...
Harshpreet discovered art at a very young age. Her first experience with fine art was in her own lovely family. Her father is a fine artist, specializing in oil paintings. He used to work on commissions and also created some original pieces. He owned an art studio and an advertising agency focused on commercial design.
Since her formative years, She has observed her father working on his compositions. Extremely fascinated, she paid keen attention to his style and technique. After noticing it for a few years, she took her first initiative and decided to try it for herself. She chose not to tell her father thinking she may not be as good as him. She went to her room one day with a newspaper in her hand. The paper had this picture of a lady, she was smiling and Harshpreet found her smile and expression beautiful. Using this picture as a reference, She began drawing her first pencil portrait. She was not very pleased with the result but what felt amazing was the process; She did not think creating something could feel that good. She spent hours working on this first portrait unknowingly. At that point, She knew that this is what she wanted to do. As she practiced with time, She found herself more and more drawn to creating expressive portraits. Finally, she had the courage to show her drawings to her father. He was so impressed with her dedication that he would let her get commissions from his art studio to encourage her to pursue her career further. In her teenage years alone, she drew over a 100 expressionist portraits, most of which were commissions.
Love For People
"My portraits are heavily inspired by expressionism. I have always found that emotions, expressions, body movement, and gestures are very powerful features that each individual displays uniquely. My work reflects people in their most natural states. I find there is so much beauty in simplicity of our day to day lives. So, my drawings revolve around expressions and simplicity."
The primary message behind her drawings is freedom, she loves drawing portraits with free flowing gestures and a warm smile.
Love For Nature
Harshpreet paints and draws botanical art like flowers, landscapes, and still life. She loves being close to nature so whenever she is travelling, she takes some time to connect with nature. She goes to spend some time ocean walking, observing wildlife, and get some beautiful snaps of flowers and wildlife. She then use those picture references and videos to draw and paint so she gets to recreate those memories where she felt connected to her true self.
"My art is a reflection of nature in one way or another"
Artistic Approach
Harshpreet is fond of realistic work, she loves adding little details that bring out a unique personality to each one of her portrait drawings. She believes these tiny additions are a necessary part of her art as they really sum up everything altogether and make it a finished composition. For her drawings, she primarily works with graphite and sometimes charcoal. She work with thin layers of graphite/charcoal and slowly builds up shadows and intensifies highlights.
After drawing contours, She shaded a very light base with graphite powder or charcoal powder. Then she studies the subject thoroughly to identify shadows and highlights. Once she has all the layers done, she brings out the mid-tones and adds smaller details like texture. Upon finishing, she coats her drawings with an archival fixative spray to protect the charcoal or graphite from smudging or fading away.
"I love challenges so I'm always trying new ways of creating art."
In the last few years, Harshpreet has been spending lots of time creating acrylic paintings and oil paintings on canvas. She loves painting flowers, landscapes, water, wildlife, and more nature art. Her painting technique is almost like patch work with a wet brush combined with dry brush for blending and adding depth. She starts with a couple layers of gesso on canvas. Then, she paints a very light base with one or two colors with either oil paint or acrylic paint and then uses dry brush technique for smooth blending, Once the base layer dries, she usse a few layers of paint patches for the rest of the painting process to bring our details while the color is still wet. Lastly, when the painting dries, she finishes it off with a couple layers of archival matte varnish.
