Entertainment

 2003-05-05

Artist sees scene by separating its colors
By Robin DeMerell
NEWS-TIMES CORRESPONDENT

With the stroke of a brush, artist Carmen Zambrano can break a cascade of long locks into a million strands of hair. All it takes is a good eye, a little imagination and lots of color, said the 23-year-old Danbury resident.

Zambrano, an art student at Western Connecticut State University, will receive the Excellence in Illustration Award Tuesday at the school’s awards ceremony.

The quiet student says she always loved to draw, first using pencil and then moving on to oil paints and finally pastels.

She recognized a talent for art in the first grade when she far surpassed her classmates in designing a homework folder. In the fourth grade, Zambrano was accepted in a special art classes.

"I really enjoy it — it just comes naturally,” she said.

As she graduated to copying designs in children’s books, Zambrano discovered a passion for fantasy and fairy tales.

Her favorite childhood book was "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis. She also enjoyed the classics Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Aesop’s Fables.

Her ideas still come from childhood favorites.

"After reading the stories, I see images of how things should look,” Zambrano said. "I can’t wait to get it on paper.”

Despite a natural ability, Zambrano said this past year she really honed her skills and perfected her technique.

"My professor (adjunct Joel Spector) told me to be looser in my pieces,” said Zambrano.

While her pictures were good, the lines were too sharp and rigid and the tension of wanting it picture-perfect was blocking creative flow. So she switched from oil paints to pastels to get a little closer to her work.

In one of her works, the fairy tale character, Rapunzel, is lying asleep surrounded by a mane of luxurious golden hair. The hair looks so real, one can almost sense how thick and soft it feels.

"I didn’t really think I’d be able to do something like this. I had to learn to give it more life — put a little magic in it,” she said.

The magic is added by dividing the hair into three colors — a base color of orangey brown, yellow, to add a golden quality and pale yellow to white for highlights.

"People tend to draw each strand of hair, but that tends to make it look not real. You have to trick the eye to make it seem like millions of pieces,” she said.

By adding a few highlights over the base color, the eye is attracted to only those pieces — giving the illusion of more strands.

Zambrano says her experience at WestConn has changed her mentality to that of a true artist and the way she looks at the world.

Her eye is trained to break things down into colors. Almost every subject is broken down by her eye like pieces of a puzzle and then transferred to her work.

"Anybody can do this. You just have to train your eyes to see it. We have a preset image of what we’re looking at,” Zambrano said. "When I look at something, I separate the colors.”

A native of Peru, Zambrano has lived in Danbury with her parents, Carmen and Jose Zambrano, and two sisters since she was six years old.

Attending WestConn thanks to a four-year Fairfield County Art Scholarship, Zambrano will graduate in spring 2004 with a double major in illustration and English. After graduate school, she hopes to write and illustrate children’s books.