Intro
My name is Eve Melia (Evie) and I’m a professional portrait & landscape artist, using acrylic paints with distinctive detail and colour.
Throughout my creative vocation so far, I’ve turned my hand to all sorts of subjects including many years of portrait commissions, local landscape paintings for art galleries, and lots of imaginative fairytale & fantasy works for fun!
Welcome to the home of my creations. Feel free to explore and learn more about my style, technique and inspirations below.
Style & Technique
​Over the school years and into my adult life, I taught myself to paint using acrylics, a fast drying medium with bold pigments which allow for many layers of detail, colour, light and shade. An ’eye for detail’ has been said to be a strong personality trait of mine which comes through in my painting style. I’ve always loved to paint with as much precision and detail as possible – often choosing subjects of nostalgia and ethereal beauty.​​
I paint onto primed, custom cut MDF boards. I draw the outline of my picture using pencil until I'm happy with the composition. Then I begin roughly painting the main areas of block colours. Layer by layer, I build up the colour, light, shading and detailing. To finish, sometimes I use sharp, high pigmented coloured pencils for some finer details.
Each painting is sprayed with a matte varnish to protect it. Paintings which will be reproduced as signed prints are taken for scanning so I have a high resolution copy of it on file.
Themes & Experience
I’m originally from North Yorkshire and I have recently relocated to the South of England. Since 2021, my landscape paintings and prints have been published and exhibited by AC Gallery at various locations in the beautiful North of England where those works were inspired. It has been and still is a privilege and a dream come true to experience success as an artist in this way, and to have got to work for AC Gallery who are one of the oldest picture framing companies in the North. I was employed to run my local branch of this gallery for many wonderful years where I gained so much insight into art and picture framing.
Over many years as a freelance portrait artist, it has been a joy to have painted hundreds of pet portraits and family portraits upon request, inspired by people's treasured photographs which often come with poignant tales of joy and connection. Transforming people's fond memories into permanent artworks to be appreciated for years to come has been a highlight of my venture and an interesting challenge to achieve a likeness to the subjects!
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I have been commissioned to paint large wall murals in public venues such as showrooms and salons, as well as being hired by JD Wetherspoon to create time capsule paintings for public display to show tourists the historic uses of various listed buildings. Commercial sign writing of mine can be found outside shops all around my hometown of Harrogate.
With my recent big move to the South for the next step of life’s adventure, my focus and passion has now become drawn towards the wonderful and weird world of fairytale, legend and fantasy. I’ve been bursting with odd ideas of mythical characters, usually taking a female form. From fairies, to mermaids, to hybrid jellyfish women! I love the combination of beautiful and strange in all forms of art, television and stories and I’ve gradually begun to bring my own characters from imagination to life. With these creative pieces drawn from my wandering mind, I’m very much going back to the roots of where my love for art began as a child.
Early Years
Early on, drawing and painting was a constant obsession ever since I learned how to hold a pencil, drawing all over tables and walls if I ran out of paper. As a quiet, thoughtful child with my head in the clouds - and a vivid imagination for fairytale and dream worlds - creating art was the way I loved to express myself, telling stories through pretty pictures. As a young child it was clear to my parents and teachers I trying really hard to draw eyes with eyelashes and hands with fingers. I still have some of my oldest drawings from age 2, in a box of my old things.
