The Artist | Jaklin Petrova
The old silk sofa gives quite a good angle to the Baroque style room. The golden embellishments of the furniture reflect the sunlight, thus dispersing colorful beams to the paintings on the walls.
Most of the pieces seem to be the original work of a young talent. A closer look shows that the author is in the center of the room, hastily moving her paintbrush across the surface of a canvas.
The girl is in her twenties, her red long hair is neatly tied so that it would not hinder her, and her face is very serious as she is drawing the last details of the tulips on the canvas. She is so concentrated to finish her work that she does not notice the big stain of paint on her jeans.
“I often ruin my clothes with paint, then I have to pretend that they have purposely been decorated by me,” Jaklin shares. People often buy into her little white lie, she says, especially if they have seen her artwork, which is usually the case, as she loves uploading it to social media.
Jaki says that sharing her work with others and seeing how they get inspired by what she does, motivates her to keep drawing. She uses the blank page to communicate her feelings and express herself. “I am a free-spirited person, who does not like to be restricted. This makes it natural for me to like art — there are no boundaries there, if I can imagine it, I can draw it,” she says.
In her vision, drawing can offer limitless opportunities. “If I want, I can draw on my walls, on my house, do my makeup, and draw on my nails. I am free to express myself.”
Jaki has experience drawing graffiti, she is good at makeup, and, while in high school, she used her talent to run a successful business.
For three years, she had her own manicure studio, where she welcomed dozens of women who wanted to get their nails done by a professional. Unlike most manicurists, Jaki would create beautiful small drawings on her clients’ nails, which would tell their own stories, just like a painting does.
The only nails Jaki currently draws on are her own, as she says she feels that being a professional manicurist is not what she wants to do. She has recently discovered a new passion (which she hopes will become her job) — drawing tattoo designs.
Jaki shares that her favorite thing about this new hobby is drawing designs for people she does not know as this unleashes her creativity. “I ask a lot of questions to understand what the person likes. When I start drawing, I spend a lot of time thinking about the person, what will suit their taste, what will look nice on his/her body. I can spend hours doing this.”
Another thing she likes about her new passion is that, through creating tattoo designs, she learns about new cultures. “One of my friends asked me to draw a Samurai tattoo last week. While researching how it should look, I learned a lot about Japanese culture and rituals. I did not know that they had traditional masks, and I also had to learn how to write in their language,” she shares.
Currently, Jaki is invested in improving her tattoo drawing technique — she takes extra classes and has started reading body art literature. “If I want this to be my job, so I need to get better because not everything goes down to talent, it is also about hard work,” she concludes.
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Viktoria Kuzmanova is studying Political Science and International relations at the American University in Bulgaria. She is curious by nature, which made her take a Journalism writing class in her second year. In conducting her last interview for this course with Jaklin Petrova, Viktoria was hoping to understand the feelings and emotions of talented artists.
