He created a portrait of the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014. An image that was used for one of Conchita Wurst’s official items: a scarf that you might have seen waving in the air. Today we are telling you about him, Federico Ghin, how he begot the idea and his passion for the Eurovision Song Contest.

His name is Federico Ghin. He is Italian and he is a student of Visual Arts and Multimedia Projects at the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Venezia. A student with a strong vocation and commitment to the subject, as he is already quite active in creating art using the knowledge he is gathering.

 

Still under training, he has already accomplished a project that many Eurovision fans would like to do themselves… He can say, at this time already, that he has painted the Austrian artist Conchita Wurst, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014.

The portrait of Conchita Wurst

The story was around already, but ESCToday had the opportunity to hear it from the source himself.

Federico Ghin explained that he was requested a hand-made portrait of Conchita Wurst, a drawing that would decorate a scarf which would be part of Conchita’s merchandising catalog. Federico was inspired by multiple concepts, but among them, the artist highlights two. Or three… On the one hand, the words that the scarf bears a title: LOVE/RESPECT. For Federico, these two are the foundations of Wurst’s message; on the other hand, Conchita’s songs, which have become a way of living for the fans, as the designer indicated. These two concepts came together in the frame of the artist’s creation.

When you see the picture on the scarf, it does look like a black and white photograph. The final execution was a blend of illustration and realistic portrait, playing with Conchita’s gaze, highlighting the beard, the singer’s trademark, and adding abundant hair (as Federico explained, we needed to fill the whole surface of the scarf). The final result reflects the vision of the artist, a harmonious face, in his own words, with feminine eyes and a beard, a masculine feature. She breaks the molds and schemes. You can be and feel beautiful not fitting into the molds of the society.

Other sketches were proposed, but the definite one was highly appreciated by Conchita Wurst. It was, according to Ghin, the most elegant and personal. Conchita highly appreciated a portrait painted by hand which turned out more refined than the initial proposal, which was digitally designed.

She did like it, as it was one of the items that the Austrian Eurovision singer highlighted in one of her promotional videos.

Digital or by hand; color or black and white? That is a matter of choice for each occasion, depending on what you need to embody or highlight. Federico has no projects for having Conchita immortalized on a canvas (so far…), but the idea is there…

The Eurovision Song Contest

Federico Ghin is also a Eurovision fan. He has followed the event since 2010. Not a long time, one might thing, but it should be kept in mind that he is quite young… Regardless of time, one of his idols is a Eurovision winner. He adores Céline Dion, the artist who took the victory to Switzerland for the last time so far, in 1988 with Ne partez pas sans moi. It was actually his passion for Céline that pulled him towards the Eurovision universe.

Federico’s home country was not back in the competition yet in 2010, but that as not an impediment for following the contest even from the distance. Although the years of absence have taken the toll on the show’s popularity in Italy, Ghin hopes that the result attained by Il Volo in Vienna will be a boost to the Contest in the country that gave the world the Festivale di San Remo, the music competition that inspired the Eurovision Song Contest.

The future

Federico will graduate in February 2016. Then, we hope, he will have all the opportunities to develop as an artist. And create more Eurovision related projects with the possibilities that new technologies offer. He already sketched one portrait of the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 Måns Zelmerlöw… Whatever he wishes to create, he wishes for the Eurovision Song Contest to continue to embody the idea that the music brings own the borders and builds bridges…

You can follow him on his Twitter account.

 

 

In bocca al lupo, Federico!

Stay tuned to ESCToday.com for more news yet on the Eurovision Song Contest, its past and present artists and how Stockholm gets ready for 2016!