Иван Ильющенко

I was born on March 1st, 1983 in Barnaul, Russia. Was very fond of drawing since I was a child, so my parents chose an art school for me, which I had successfully graduated from.
At age 15 I have opened hip-hop culture for myself, particularly got very interested in graffiti drawings. I gathered my own team of like-minded friends, took part in each competition in every Siberian city there was. Most of them brought me awards or prizes, depending on the type of competition.
Since then I have been asked to create designs in private homes, stores, clubs by drawing graffiti there. At the same time I applied for architecture degree in local university, which I graduated from in 2000.
Although I had quite a big number of requests to draw graffiti, I felt that it was not enough for me. Spraying paint out of a can did not give the quality I wanted to achieve, so I got interested in aerography. Graffiti and aerography are very close to each other, in my opinion, but aerography offers much more opportunity to make a painting realistic.
Starting from 2003 I took part in many regional competitions, in 2010 – got 3rd place in Nationwide Aerography Contest.
Aerography allows to socialize quite a lot. For instance, once I took part in the event for Russian Record Book, I take time to coach young and perspective artists who want to improve their aerography skills.
I prefer to work in aerography style because it gives me more opportunity to express myself, through big graphical paintings along with highly detailed, almost jewel-like, hyper-realistic works. It is interesting to watch a viewer of my works while he compares and thinks how it was possible to draw the details.
The most inspiring for me is to draw people, showing their character, mood… I challenge myself to show it through their body or parts of their body. When I draw hands or backs, I have a goal to make the painting as realistic as possible, show each detail and the mood of the character comes out of it.
The painting “Back.Folded” belongs to the series of paintings of female backs in different positions. Female body has always inspired artists all over the world. For me, the main interest is to show soft lines of female forms, yet, to do it precisely and aerography is the best way to do it. I choose wood panels as my main material, because it also has its shape and lines and unique texture, so my aim is to combine the material with the object, so they could complement one another.Collapse