Darya Martinova is the creator of the project ‘The Infinite Garden’ shortlisted for WIA2021 in the Professional Alternative Publishing Category!

What’s your favorite thing about your project?

I love to create the book entirely. Work on project by myself from concept to print version. It was so fascinating to use calligraphy. Art of calligraphy was perfect way of conducting pulsates of poetry.

Tell us a bit more about your process:

That was my first experience with poetry. I was reading the poems again and again. But still didn’t understand what to draw. 

I feel music and rhythms. And I tried to communicate it graphically. 

I started to draw my favorite things – plants, pieces of sky through reeds. 

Once I finished with sketches, I finally saw my characters. Illustrations began to seem allegorically enough.  

By the way, the drawings was colorful first! We decided to choose black and white to make the book more dramatic and a print process cheaper))

What Materials did you use?

I used a lot of materials to make verity of textures in black and white. Ink, graphite, charcoal, oil pastels, markers and digital after all.

 What did you learn from creating this project?

Calligraphy! That’s became a key for a book. Poetry is words. Although printed words lose liveliness. I tried lettering and it bring rhythm to the book. It wasn’t easy to find the right style, so I spent plenty meters of paper. Happily, some book spreads finally formed alright. 

What are your plans for the future?

I’m excited to keep working with books. And I want to try magazine illustration too.

I am open for new projects. I would like to get away from realism and develop my personal visual language.