This is me! When I was three and a half years old, I doodled a tale book. Since that time I draw. Story and illustrations based on my childhood experiences, imagination and creatures. On the pictures the stories are written in Hungarian, but you can find my English translations among the picture files.
Ez én vagyok! 3 és fél éves koromban firkáltam egy mesekönyvet. Azóta is rajzolok. Illusztrációimat és a hozzájuk tartozó történetet gyermekkori élményeim, fantáziám és saját meselényeim ihlették. Meséimet és a naptárt magyarul írtam meg, de a képfájlok között megtalálhatóak az angol fordítások.
brain-CHILD-hood: Brigitta Katyina's calendar for year 2019
"Isn't it too early?" asked the shop assistant from my mother, who was buying color pencils for me. I started to draw when I was 1.5 years old. Colors were among my first words. I invented my own vocables for yellow, green, red, white and violet, and they sounded playfully strange, even for Hungarian.
Time was getting on, my mother was teaching me how to draw figures - houses, people, objects - and even showed how to write their simple names. I clearly remember when she taught me to write "MUM". Though I couldn't read, letters were usual, because Mum used to read poems, stories and tales for me. You know, my mother is a teacher, but stayed home with me and my sisters when we were young.
"I am making a tale book, too!" the 3.5-year-old me decided while watching the illustrations of a storybook called "Old lady's roe fawn". I grabbed an empty paper, folded in half and drew some crossing lines to section its surface. Among them I doodled stick figures of my favorite toys.
"I am making a tale book, too!" the 3.5-year-old me decided while watching the illustrations of a storybook called "Old lady's roe fawn". I grabbed an empty paper, folded in half and drew some crossing lines to section its surface. Among them I doodled stick figures of my favorite toys.
"Write down my tale" - I asked my mother, who was admiring the simple doodles that depicted movements like a comic. I was telling what happened in my sketches. Mum was writing it to an empty space near the doodles.
"Bang! Phanti fell off the swing. Papa Phanti is curling his trunk in laughter. Bang! The little Phanti fell off the swing just right now. Papa Phanti brings a handkerchief. Phanti stands up, some tears fall from his eyes. Papa Phanti goes up to him, asking what to do, and immediately wipes his eyes." I dictated, Mum was writing. I used more papers, gluing them together, thus it really became like a booklet. Time and again I returned to it and depicted my new experiences.
“Puffy Balloon and Phanti is sliding nicely at the kindergarten. Phanti is pulling a 'Streak dasher' (that means airplane) while sliding. Puffy Balloon takes down the string from Phanti's trunk. Phanti gives the 'Streak Dasher' to Puffy Balloon. Puffy Balloon likes it, because balloons like (to eat) it.” Mum was writing my dictation tale.
I had a luminescent toy elephant, in the booklet he experienced what I did. True I haven’t caught any airplane, but I could slide nicely at the kindergarten.
“Red: Stop! White: Go, Daddy! …Wow, this light barrier has two heads! This is a Light Dragon Barrier. It climbs to the top of our car, and this way it travels from railway station to another railway station. No, it is called a Chimpanzee Barrier, because it climbs on the car like a monkey.”
We were living in the country, sometimes traveled to Budapest city. I was amazed by high buildings, lots of cars, vehicles and strange machines. The city lights appealed but were a bit scary to me. My favorite machine was the light barrier because it’s like a creature. The Hungarian standard has three lights in a triangle – reminding me to organs of both a head and a torso.
As a little girl I really loved to play with matchbox cars. I was building a road from my books and rolled them along. Using color papers and sticks, me and Mum created accessories for my toy vehicles: we made pilot-lamps, moveable barriers, what’s more, a whip antenna with flag. Once Daddy allowed me to play with an old eaves gutter. It became a downhill slope where my cars and trains rolled down happily.
Dabbly lost interest in grass, instead, he ate all leaves of the tree. Sandra jumped high and started to chew a branch. Mother hippo warned her son Watee, not to climb too high, because it’s dangerous. Therefore, Watee climbed in the lowest branch, but it was the thinnest. The skillful, waggish Aquine was shaking her ass - I mean the top branch. The tree trunk become sloppy where Brigihippo was sliding down again and again.”
It was a summer holiday in 2002, I was 7 and I came up with my hippos: Watee and his friends. Back then, I had no idea that growing number of characters will become attached to me, stay and grow with me, they will be my friends instead of friends. I didn’t know that they will teach me how to draw a human body - as the following ten years they will slowly evolve into humanoid beings. I was planning like: when I grow up, I make a film featuring them, but till then I hide them from people.
“There once Mr. Farmer had a lot of doggies and a mini-miniature garden. Mr. Farmer’s doggies didn’t like the mini-miniature garden, so they chewed up the fences. Mr. Farmer was angry; he has rebuilt the fences of the mini-miniature garden. But the doggies always chewed up the fences. Therefore, Mr. Farmer has built the fences of a little bit bigger garden around the mini-miniature garden. But the doggies also chewed up the fences of the little bit bigger garden. Mr. Farmer has built the fences of a very much bigger garden around the little bit bigger garden. Of course, the doggies chewed up these fences as well. Since then, Mr. Farmer and his doggies’ garden always keeps on growing and growing…”
I hid under the table, because a dinosaur scared me. But I love dinosaurs, so I took some courage soon. I had a computer program, in which I learned about them in an interactive cave-like museum. I dug up their bones so they resurrected and sometimes they emerged from some places of the tunnel while roaring strangely. However, the CD went wrong so I couldn’t play with it since then. Longing for the program I made a concept art booklet about my own game to program it when I grow up. At nights I was even dreaming about the completed one.
“Do you still drawing hippos and dinosaurs?” teased my classmates. “When you grow up you won’t be dealing with dinosaurs and tale characters anymore” indoctrinated a neighbor when I was ten. “But I will!” I exclaimed stubbornly. “I don’t want to stop it!” These words were always buzzing in my ears. This is what kept the bond between me and my imagination’s creatures, and the desire that someday I will really make tale books, cartoons and computer games.
The 6 illustrations together. A 6 illusztráció együtt:
Photos of details. Fényképek a részletekről:
I am studying Graphic Designer MA course at Media and Design Department, Visual Arts Institute, Eszterházy Károly University in Eger, Hungary. I was presenting "Brain-child-hood" at the CROP MARKS exhibition of this semester
Tervezőgrafika mesterszakon tanulok az Eszterházy Károly Egyetem Vizuális Művészeti Intézetében. Munkámat bemutattam a CROP MARKS félévi kiállításunkon.
Thank you for watching! Köszönöm a figyelmet!
Made at the Media and Design Department, Visual Arts Institute, Eger, Hungary.
Készült: Média és Design Tanszék, Vizuális Művészeti Intézet, Eger.
Photo & Consultant: Szigeti G. Csongor
Készült: Média és Design Tanszék, Vizuális Művészeti Intézet, Eger.
Photo & Consultant: Szigeti G. Csongor
