Introducing: Denitsa Peneva

Artists

Presentation

Denitsa Peneva

Date and place of birth: 19.05.1983, Blagoevgrad

Education:

151st SOUPI, “Fashion Design”, 2001

National Academy of Fine Arts, “Graphics”, 2006 – Bachelor

Kunstakademie Maastricht, “Scientific Illustration”, 2012 – Master

National Academy of Fine Arts, “Book, Illustration and Printed Graphics” – PhD student

Professional experience: With the exception of a few illustrations and exhibitions made during my studies at the high school and the academy, I have been professionally involved in illustration since 2006, and in scientific illustration since 2008.

Exhibitions:

April, 1999 Exhibition “Fashion Graphics”, jointly with Venko Nikolichev, organized by the “Clothing Design” department of the 151st SOUPI in the “Oborishte” hall; solo presentation of the works in the "Harmony" hall on the occasion of a literary reading by Aneta Ivanova.
May, 2010 Participation in the exhibition "Thracian Gods and Heroes", held in front of the Ivan Vazov National Theater.
November, 2010 Three selected works in the exhibition on the occasion of the XXII Congress of AEIMS at the National Museum of Natural History, Milan, one of which is included in the representative calendar of the museum.
September, 2011 Solo exhibition "One-Is-We" with works from the period 1999 - 2010, cafe-gallery "Karabas-Barabas".
November, 2011 Exhibition "The Music of the Forest" at the National Museum of Natural History.
February, 2012 Exhibition of graduate masters in Scientific Illustration at the Medical University, Maastricht.
November 2014. Participation in the exhibition on the occasion of the XIII Iberian Congress of Herpetology, Aveiro (Portugal)
September 2015. Member of the jury of the competition "The Great Return", in which over 40 young and established authors from the country and abroad participate and present over 70 works.
November 2015. Co-organizer and one of the main participants in the exhibition "The Great Return", a side event of the First National Conference on the Reintroduction of Conservation-Relevant Species, organized jointly by several state institutions and non-governmental organizations - Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Federation of Environmental Protection Associations "Green Balkans", "Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna", "Pensoft" Publishing House, National Academy of Arts and National Museum of Natural History.
May, 2016 First solo exhibition "Illustratoria", dedicated to scientific and popular science illustration, National Museum of Natural History
November, 2016 Organizer and participant in the First Annual Exhibition of DAPHNI - Society of Animalists, Florists and Scientific Illustrators at the National Museum of Natural History;
March, 2017 - Participation in the exhibition on the occasion of the XXVI Congress of AEIMS;
May, 2017 Exhibition "Illustratoria", dedicated to scientific and popular science illustration, at the Regional Museum of Natural History, Plovdiv;
January, 2018 - Organizer and participant in the exhibition "The Ancient Forests of Bulgaria and Their Inhabitants" at the National Museum of Natural History, organized jointly with "WWF" Bulgaria;
February, 2018 – Organizer and participant in the exhibition “Seagulls” accompanying the 13th International Seagull Meeting, held in Ruse;

Awards:

1987, 1988, 1989: winner of a gold, bronze and silver medal respectively from an international children’s drawing competition in Japan;
November, 2014. Honorary award for the work “Genus Bolitoglossa”, as well as an audience award on social networks for “Genus Basiliscus” from the exhibition on the occasion of the XIII Iberian Congress of Herpetology, Aveiro (Portugal);
May, 2016. The work “Predators and Prey in Pantanal” was one of the selected works in the fourth edition of the international scientific illustration competition “Illustrasciencia” and subsequently won one of the jury awards;

Illustrated works:

“Fluffy Tale” – Sokolova, D., 2007
“Dreams” – Vartuninska, R., 2008
“Originality and Influences in Thracian Bronze Sculpture during the Early Iron Age (10th-6th centuries BC) – the Deer Statuette from Sevlievo” – Karadzhinov, I., 2011
“Illustrating a Field Guide” – Peneva, D., 2012 by ABK Maastricht
“Old Forests – Unknown Treasures of Bulgaria” – Lazarova, S., 2013 brochure for WWF Bulgaria
“Memory Anthology” – Baum, J, 2013, USA
“A new species of Alopecosa (Araneae: Lycosidae) from Canada: a morphological description supported by DNA barcoding of 19 congeners” – Blagoev, G/ Dondale, C, 2014 for Zootaxa by Magnolia Press, Canada
"Treatise on Zoology – Anatomy, Taxonomy, Biology. The Myriapoda. Volume 2" – Minelli, A, 2015 by BRILL, Leiden
"Field guide to the amphibians and reptiles of Cusuco National Park, Honduras", in press

Favorite illustrator: On first reading – Tomer Hanuka, Yuko Shimizu, Aubrey Beardsley, Ivan Bilibin, Kay Nielsen, Beatrix Potter, Tony Wolf, Ernst Haeckel, Frank H. Netter, Albrecht Duerer, John-James Audubon, Roger Tory Peterson, Jan Lewington, Richard Lewington, William T. Cooper, Umberto Catallano. Paul Kidbey, Yasen Gyuzelev, Rebecca Dautremer, Wolf Elbruch, Dominique Mertens and an awful lot of others;

Favorite illustrated book? This is also a very difficult question… I have many favorite series from my childhood – those about Bosco, the Barbarones, the Secrets of the Animals and, of course, those of Beatrix Potter. In general, flora and fauna predominate as motifs and objects, regardless of whether it is children's fiction or encyclopedias - this is probably one of the main reasons. Now I most often stumble on different descriptors - both as an amateur and out of professional interest. The other thing that I care about extremely much. is the elegance of the drawing, regardless of how detailed the illustration itself is.

What book do you dream of illustrating? In my field of work - everything that is an atlas, descriptor, etc., regardless of the species and area. Everything there is interesting and exciting to me, because even the most ordinary at first glance object becomes extraordinary when you start drawing it. If we talk about fiction, I would be happy to illustrate Murakami's "Chronicle of the Spring Bird" (as well as most of his works). “The Fountain”, “The Master and Margarita”, “Animal Farm”, for example, are also among the books that I find inspiring. I recently had the opportunity to illustrate motifs from “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and although I have never been a fan of Jules Verne, the task turned out to be extremely exciting, so I would continue in this direction. For obvious reasons, I also have favorites among Andersen’s fairy tales – “Little Ida’s Flowers”, “Eliza and the Wild Swans” and especially “Thumbelina”, where there is an abundance of representatives of flora and fauna and the opportunity to work in great detail, thanks to the plot

Website: denitsapeneva.wix.com

Facebook/Instagram/Twitter page:

https://www.facebook.com/illustrix/

https://www.instagram.com/denitsa_peneva_illustrix/

https://twitter.com/peneva_denitsa

https://strixxx.deviantart.com