Victoria Nakada

About the Project

My project is a collection of Earth’s processes. I came up with the idea when I was randomly reading an excerpt on the lifecycle of water and had an image of it naturally come to mind. I had a lot of fun learning about this natural process of Earth and illustrating it. So from there, I kept reading about different things about nature until an image came to my mind again. This is how my ongoing collection came to be.

Brief

The brief I set for myself was to try and not force myself to be too technical with the illustration. I think its natural to want to put in a lot of information in an illustration depicting science but I wanted it to be more illustrative than informative.

Research

I read about many types of scientific processes to decide on which to illustrate. Once I found one that inspired me, I chose my favorite parts about it to highlight in my illustration and researched more in depth about those specific parts.

Materials

I used procreate for this project.

Process

I wanted this project to be more illustrative rather than informative. So, I figured using symbolism would help me stick to my brief. A lot of the symbolism I used came naturally to my mind as I was reading about specific Earth’ processes. For example, in ‘Earth Layers’ I read about how the Earth’s magnetic field is created by the movement of liquid iron in the outer core. So, I instantly thought of using a compass to represent that.

Distractions

Due to the pandemic, I lost my job as a flight attendant and moved back in with my family. I was really lost trying to figure out what to do with my life. Although it was hard at times to feel creative when not in my own space, I’m thankful that I had the time to get back into art after not doing it for many years prior to the pandemic.

Numbers

I worked on each illustration from start to finish for about 5 hours.

Reflections

I would’ve liked to include written summaries explaining the specific scientific process to match the illustration. I can still include them now but I think it would’ve been a better outcome had I done it while I was I still in that mind space.

Advice

Something I struggle with is coming up with an idea of what to draw. I feel like most ideas come to me when I’m not trying. So some advice that helps me is to just do things that you enjoy and go out in nature. Let your mind subconsciously become inspired by just having fun.

Future

For the future, I plan to illustrate a children’s book and one day I’d like to do an in person shop for my art.

Dream Commission

All commissions I receive are dreams come true to me. They are all different and help me build new skills.

Favourite Thing to Draw

My favorite thing to draw are palm trees and houses on stilts.

Workspace

I work any where that I can. I got my job as a flight attendant back this year so any where that my job takes me, I make sure to bring my iPad to pass the time.

Thanks

I’d like to thank everyone involved with the WIA! This win has been so motivating and uplifting for me after a tough year. I never thought I would even make it to the long list so this is a huge accomplishment that I will remember and cherish forever.