ALPE PRAGAS - MON-FRI: 8:00 - 12.00 & 13.00 - 18.00 | SAT: 09.00 - 12.30 & 13.30 - 18.00 | SUN: CLOSED
The Expressive Art of Illustration
Meeting Annelies Leitner is a journey into the expressive art of illustration. “I didn’t realize I could draw well until teachers and friends at school started pointing it out,” she recounts from her studio near Bressanone in South Tyrol, a place that has catered to her creative talents for almost thirty years. As her business card for this occasion, she brings a 30 x 42 block with sheets porous enough to absorb color yet smooth enough to allow colored pencils to glide evenly. The protagonists are fruits such as black currants, apricots, and over fifty other varieties that, seen together, are a dive into ancient recipe books. Botanical drawing involves total immersion in nature, with the definition of the fruit subject rendered fresh and vibrant, releasing an almost meditative realism. Her graphite (a fine, soft-tipped B Black pencil) is driven by the harvest of Alpe Pragas, a precious company situated in the Dolomite, since 1997.
It was during those years that Annelies’ studio was starting its professional journey, after completing her studies in advertising graphics and various experiences in graphic design studios. One day, she was contacted by a certain Stefan Gruber for a job. I will always remember that meeting. Stefan, wearing a leather cowboy hat, pulled a jar of jam from his bag and said, “Everyone tells me my jams are delicious, but the packaging is terrible. I want to make a product that is as beautiful as its quality.”
There is something that makes Annelies unique. Her chameleon-like creative ability renews her expressive line with every new project. This means you might fall in love with her work multiple times without realizing it’s the same hand behind it.
Her toolbox is filled with pencils, watercolors, chalks, and pastels, a variety of leads with different grades and hardnesses. Then, between computer and tablet, digital illustration does not shy away from experimenting with textures and colors with the flexibility the medium allows. The project aligns with the style as the event aligns with sensitivity, enabling her to transition from graphic novels to caricatures, from fantasy to realism, from flat illustration to 3D, up to line and concept art if the client requests it or if she herself suggests it.
With a gentle yet relentless spirit, she produced the image that followed the growth of Alpe Pragas 25 years ago. The dawn of the rebranding could once again count on Annelies’ skill, where the visual representation is, this time, an elegant nod to the origin. Each board required one or two days of drawing, evident in the reproduction of the elderflower, whose dense white umbels supported by stalks are rendered lifelike by pencils and ultra-fine brushes dipped in watercolors.
“I am proud of my clients, even though they are structured and often international, they understand how much illustration requires a time of gathering and execution that is also internal. Every now and then I have to remind myself to sleep! Drawing dissolves time, and today’s rhythms, as we know, follow a different faith.” When does inspiration strike? At night, when the mind is absent. I hurry to sketch it for fear of losing it, but in reality, I have never forgotten the form liberated from the dream so far.
