Meet Amandine Lori Soudan

Amandine Lori Soudan practices, among other things, miniature painting on watch dials for la Haute Horlogerie. Her approach to her work varies: either the client provides her with a design that she interprets, or she creates her own design.

In order to create her own pieces, Amandine Lori Soudan relies on various sources of inspiration. Indeed, the artist is very fond of History, vanished civilizations, and more particularly certain periods such as Antiquity, the Middle Ages or our present time. Some painters or paintings touch her more particularly, such as "Ingres and the Bather of Valpinçon" or the frescoes "Grotte Chauvet". The know-how of craftsmen who have disappeared or who pass from generation to generation, it is this magic of art and its ability to cross time that inspires her daily. Amandine Lori Soudan has several jobs, one of them being a 2D animator for the world of cartoons as well as an illustrator. Consequently, it is the whole universe of cartoons, mango and youth illustration that also inspires her, both by the colors and by the very varied universes: fantasy, dreamlike, superheroes or science fiction. The various techniques of realization also make her want to create paint with coloured pencils, collage or engraving. Nature is also a beautiful source of inspiration: the seasons that come and go and illuminate us with all their different colours. Amandine Lori Soudan still has a small preference for spring because of all its symbolism of renewal as well as the rebirth of nature that accompanies it.

Amandine Lori Soudan learnt part of her job which is painting at the ENAAI at the Ecole Supérieure d'Arts (Teaching Applied Arts and the Image) and the application of painting in miniature by herself and through a person working in the watchmaking field. But it is thanks to practice (she has been painting in miniature for about 8 years now) and experience that the artist evolves day after day. Amandine Lori Soudan does not use gold leaf but our gold powder which she mixes with a medium and applies with an ultra-fine brush. Powder is very pleasant to work with, from fine lines to writing, through volume effects: it is a completely different sensation from painting.

Amandine Lori Soudan particularly likes to paint on stone because it gives a new dimension to painting. The picture below is a photograph of a piece that she painted, the support being a lapis lazuli stone. It is above all the support that inspires the subject she is going to paint. For this project, she was inspired by Mesopotamia, a time when this stone was frequently used. After much research, Amandine Lori Soudan chose to add a deer, often presented as the deity protecting nature. This painting symbolized History, craftsmanship, art, the past not to be forgotten in order to allow us to move forward in our present and the symbolism of nature which is precious to us, on which we depend totally and which we cannot control. She loves the balance between the blue of the lapis and the brightness of the powder, as well as the warm yellow of 24 Carats gold powder.

A huge thank you to Amandine Lori Soudan who accepted to answer to our questions and shared with us her view on the creations she makes!

Credits photos: Amandine Lori Soudan

 painting with gold powder from DeLafée