I’m an illustrator, writer and landscape architect – not necessarily in this sequence.
As an architect, drawing images for the visual presentation of a project has always been a very important part of my work but it’s always been about the concept and never about the picture itself – it took me until my 30s to start to create images depicting my own stories, my own imaginary reality.
This website is a compilation of my creative visual projects: ‘visible stories’ and tales about enchanted nature, winter, the sea and the sky; my illustration series for my children’s book; my original opera poster designs; restored old botanical illustrations and paintings; and my wildlife conservation poster project.
As for the title of the site and number 12: you’ll notice that most of my series contain 12 pictures that are somehow related. When something captures my mind – a visual idea, a story, topic, whatever – I keep on creating pictures around it in my head. I needed to set a limitation for myself that provides enough creative space but also helps me to actually complete the images and move on to something else. 12 seemed an appropriate number…
I rather label my creations illustrations than classic fine art pieces because almost always there’s a story (or at least a fragment of a story…) behind them – sometimes my own tales, sometimes ancient legends, novels, movies or even music.
My seascapes and skyscapes, imaginary scenes and landscapes are inspired by our existing world, but with a touch of illusion – I like to play with unreal lighting and reflections creating compositions that feel ‘almost’ realistic. My images all start as manual sketches but I always scan, rework and finish them digitally, using different methods from digital painting to manipulated elements of photographs. I don’t use AI generated images for any of my work.
All images are available in my official store in different sizes as framed, acrylic, metal or canvas fine art prints. If you happen to live in Hungary, some of my images are also available as signed editions printed by myself. If you’d like to purchase a signed print from abroad, please contact me via email.
My book ‘A dragon’s tales…’ is out and available in Hungarian: Egy sárkány meséi az öreg kőhídról és az elvarázsolt erdőről.
About my wildlife conservation poster project: these poster series were made primarily with the intention to help to educate young generations about environmental issues and to help to bring some awareness to what humankind has done and is doing to the amazing wildlife of this planet. My whole profit from any sales of these series goes to the Sea Shepherd to support their fight to save our oceans and marine wildlife. You find more about this project in this post on my blog where you also find informative posts about each species.
Recently I started to add digitally restored paintings, drawings and etchings from various artists of the last centuries to my print store.
Digitally restoring scanned old drawings, illustrations and paintings became a hobby for me through the antique book and print shop my family has been running for decades. You find all kinds of beautiful old illustrations – botanical drawings, advertising posters from the early 1900’s, book illustrations from the Golden Age, traditional Chinese flower and bird paintings – and some selected works of classic and modernist painters among my collections as well. The collections are continuously augmented, please check back for updates of fresh content.
With licensing inquiries or any other questions you can contact me via email.
Have a nice day!
Moira Risen
All original images and text are © Moira Risen 2017-2022 unless otherwise stated. Any reproduction, modification, publication, transmission, transfer, or exploitation of any of the original content, for personal or commercial use, is prohibited. All rights reserved.