Estelle Valls de Gomis Official Website - Art, Photo, Books, Webdesign and more

Welcome to the Official Website of Estelle Valls de Gomis ° Bienvenue sur le site officiel d'Estelle Valls de Gomis

Latest update July 1st 2008
Dernière mise à jour 1er juillet 2008

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About the artist :
Estelle Valls de Gomis is a professional writer, essayist and translator who also, as an amateur, does illustration, photography and web/graphic design, all freelance. She also is an emerging publisher who started her own fanzine Le Calepin Jaune, back in 2003, and more recently entered the world of professional small publishing with her own house, Le Calepin Jaune Editions, in 2007.

Her writings were first published in fanzines back in 1998, and then in professional publishing houses in 1999. Her main books are two short-story collections, Des Roses et Des Monstres (first published by éditions du CoLibris in 2004 and then in an improved version by éditions Nuit d'Avril in 2007), Le Cabaret Vert (published by éditions Nuit d'Avril in 2004 and then in an improved version in 2005), a literary essay derived from her doctoral thesis, Le Vampire au Fil des Siècles (published by éditions Cheminements in 2005), a novel, Les Gentlemen de l'Etrange (published by Le Calepin Jaune Editions in 2007 and which she also illustrated and designed) and a poems, short-stories and photography collection Horizon Motel (published by Le Calepin Jaune Editions in 2007 for which she also did the bookdesign).

A self-taught illustrator and photographer, Estelle has also had a few illustrations and photos published in various fanzines and books, having been chosen by two major French fantastic and fantasy writers, Charlotte Bousquet and Léa Silhol, to illustrate some of their texts in two of their books, respectively, Lettres aux Ténèbres and Fovéa. Some of her children's books art has been published in fairy tales books by Fairytale Pop. Her illustrations of rock-star Bebe Buell have been chosen to be featured in a documentary about the singer, belonging in a series of documentaries to be released mid-2008, and directed by Spanish company Plural Entertainment. Estelle's first art-book will be released in France in 2009 by CDS Editions.

More data :
Name : Estelle Valls de Gomis
Age : 34 (born Oct.6th/73)
Status & origins : married / French-born + various European-mixed descent
Languages : French, English/American, Spanish (bits, understood mostly), Catalan (understood but not spoken)
Occupations : Illustrator, writer, publisher, translator, amateur photographer, amateur web, book & graphic designer
Background/Education : Doctoral degree obtained in 2003 (specialty : English fantastic genre literature and translation)
Writing style : Fantastic, other genres, view my bibliography for more details.
Writing since : early childhood, published (amateur and then professional publications) since 1998
Favorite writers : anything between 1790-1915 mostly, Bram Stoker, Théophile Gautier, Colette, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Charles Bukowski, Jim Morrison and many more
Literary Awards won : First Prize of the Victorian short-story 2003 for "Un cigare pour Manfred" ("A Cigar for Manfred") by the late CRHV (Holmesian and Victorian Research Center) / Merlin Award 2007 (Prix Merlin) of the best short-story for "Circé et la malédiction du Démeter" ("Circe and the curse of the Demeter")
Web design styles : retro, vintage 1950s, Art Nouveau & Belle Époque, floral, sci-fi and basically any genres required
PC Tools : html, MS FrontPage, MS Word, Adobe Photoshop, Serif PagePlus, Scribus
Building & running websites since : 2002
Web Awards won : ArtMajeur Silver Award 2004 for my website Count Vardalek's Manor
Doing photography since : 1987 (amateurly), a book featuring 40 of my photos, Horizon Motel, was issued in December 2007
Cameras : Canon Prima AF-8, Canon EOS 3000V, Canon Digital Ixus 750, single use cameras
Photography styles : (my images are not digitally modified and I never use filters and effects unless otherwise stated) landscapes, "skyscapes", nature, flowers, impressions, atmospheres, still life
Favorite photographers : Shannon Brooke, Viva Van Story, Frank Lisciandro, Danielle Bedics, Marco Patino, Steve Diet Goedde
Illustrator since : early childhood, published (amateur and then professional publications) since 1998
Art styles : Art Nouveau, Fantastic, Vampiric, Fantasy, Vintage 1950s Pin-ups, children's book art, Manga, US Comics
Preferred media : pencil, biro, ink, markers, gouache, acrylics, watercolors, color pencils, pastels, Photoshop (rarely)
Preferred paper : Bristol board
Favorite artists : Natalia *Nati* Pierandrei (she's pure genius !), Aubrey Beardsley, Dite, Ayami Kojima, Natalie Shau, Alan Davis, John Byrne, Jim Lee, Enki Bilal, Olivia de Berardinis, Alberto Vargas, Erté, Georges Barbier, Pierre Joseph Redouté, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfons Mucha, Salvador Dalí, Richard Gray, Giovanni Boldini, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Robert Hughes, John William Waterhouse, William Morris... and many more !
Favorite Pin-up girls : Dita Von Teese, Sabina Kelley, Bernie Dexter, Frankie Sin, Heidi Van Horne and quite a few others
Professional translator & essayist since : 1998
Publisher (amateur) since : 2003
Publisher (professional) since : 2007

Trivia : "I am a natural born Dracula and Jim Morrison fan, my favorite super-hero since my early teens is Wolverine, I love music ranging from the 1960s to the early 1990s, my favorite bands being The Doors (Morrison era) and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, I do enjoy classical music and jazz, as regards movies I like almost any genre, especially what's been made between 1960 and 1975, my favorite actor is Louis de Funès, and I'm a series addict, apart from the huge series from the 1960s/1970s I enjoy many, my favorites being The Shield and Sex and the City, and countless others that me and my husband watch whenever we have time as well as wrestling (Raw, Smackdown, ECW...)".

Favorite title "Outlandos d'Amour", for those of you who wouldn't know already, it's the title of an album by the band The Police, dating back to the late 1970s. They're not my favorite band, although I like some of their music, but this little line is beautiful and eerie sounding, one of the best lines I've read, that and some by Jim Morrison, I wish I had invented it :)

My other websites :
> Le Calepin Jaune literary & 19th century genre fanzine
> Le Calepin Jaune Editions : the publishing house I created in 2007
> I also have quite a few other personal websites, some of them dating back to 2002 (Kingdoms of Estel, Les Roses de Bacchus, Le Boudoir de la Marquise, The Merry Mouse, Estelle's Pin-ups, Oranji, Vampire Menuet, Unlikely Designs and Leandre Borgia) but they are temporarily offline and their url redirects to this site because I chose the simplest option of putting all my galleries and my complete bibliography on this one site you are viewing now.

Contact : e-mail me personally at webmaster[@]estellevallsdegomis.com

Rates & Commissions : I'm sorry I am not accepting free/unpaid requests (no time and most media I use are expensive), I only work on commission/order. Rates are not negotiable (save on the rise ;)) and are available on this page.

Originals & Prints for sale : I regularly put artwork (all genres I do - see above) for sale on my Etsy page or on objects in my store at Cafepress and also originals on this very site

Frequently Asked Questions : are answered on this page.

My online Portfolios & Profiles : Ultra-Book, Carbonmade, Portfolios, DeviantArt, Myspace (my page is back), Retrokitten, Kind Industries, LiveJournal (I recently joined Facebook and Viadeo but I can't remember the page urls, I'll note them down here later ^_^)