We recently connected with Sara Bertola and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Ever since I was a child, my primary need has always been drawing, and it was accompanied by the curiosity to make odd objects or to replicate what I saw around me. This gradually evolved into my full-time job, which I have been doing for several years now. The hardest part is actually believing it. I am very lucky, because I have a partner and a friend who seriously believe in it and they pushed me to give art a chance. Likely, this worked for me and I think it is impossible to do it alone. Anyway, I honestly believe that I worked as hard as possible to learn quickly, and I really do not know how I could have made it faster. On the contrary, if magically I could go back in time, I will try to learn the craft slowly and better, instead of making the so many mistakes I did, but now I am fine with that too. Maybe, I ran along a winding road, but I reached the finish line.
The most important skills in my job are patience, precision, stubbornness and the mental and physical organization of the commissions and the laboratory. Luckily, precision and stubbornness are innate, and this job gifted me with patience, but organization remains my biggest obstacle. I am a very chaotic person and often the lack of a precise scheme slows me down and creates problems. Of course, I do not proceed randomly, but I admit that other people manage to have a better organization and I recognize its usefulness. I have a great admiration for them!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

“We see potential in her, but she draws”, said my teachers during high school years. Although it was an artistic institute, class timetable did not provide enough hours to tire me of pencil and eraser. Luckily, at Scuola del Fumetto, in Milan, drawing while teachers explain is encouraged, rather almost required! Flavio Ferron, Alberto Savini and Silvio Speca for three years reproved, supported, guided and introduced me in the world of comics. They gave me means of orienting myself in the mazes of anatomy, color, perspective, image building and screenplay, illustrating and designing with a free hand or using Photoshop, with or without ink, pencil or pen, on paper or napkins.
Subjects were as diverse as the requests that I get but, in my free time, I get lost in fantasy. It is this passion for fantasy that stimulates and follows me in almost everything I do. I draw Fantasy, I play its music, I make and wear it. Starting from tabletop role-playing games, already a passion, the step towards LARP world was pretty quick. In 2005, I began sewing costumes for friends so I could pay my little expenses during school years, and this was my first encounter with fabrics, feathers, leather, resins and many materials and tools. Now, more than fifteen years later, I am myself main customer… and a very demanding one! I like having costumes and accessories that are not only beautiful but even comfortable and durable.
In 2011, this became my main activity and, year after year, my job evolved and I let go some techniques to learn others that helped meeting my customers’ needing. I started my own small business and now, I have a photographer and social media manager, and an occasional employee. After more than a thousand commissions, of which I followed the entire production process, from conception, to realization and shipment, I am changing direction towards original costumes and masks, realizing customers’ or my own ideas and projects. Actually, I am exploring folk mythology of different parts of the word, because I love legends and traditions, seeking to give my own vision to these mysterious and charming characters.
The main difficult that I solve for my clients is expressing their ideas: explaining your needing and desires to a stranger is not easy task. An intense give-and-take communication and reference pictures are essential tool to draw a project meeting their ideas and, when needed, together we modify the project to fully fit their needing. Should it be more comfortable? Or lighter? Or simply more suitable for use? It is a very interesting two-mind creation process! Certainly, I work hard to carry out my projects, sometimes even beyond common sense and what I estimated, but I believe that realizing something really well-designed is always worth it! I’m all for quality work.
I do not think my brand is already unique and recognizable at a glance as I would like it to be. I still have to grow and learn, but when I look back on where I started from, papier-mâché cat ears and IKEA plaid hooded capes, and I am very happy of what it is today. My biggest pride is the new path I am walking from a couple of years, selling my own designed masks, costumes and accessories. Personal interpretations of what I like and stimulate me, things I see and learn travelling and exploring that in my studio come to life, with their own stories and voices, and molding them in thousands of way according to clients’ needing and aspirations or following my inspirations. It is one of my own ways for expressing myself for who I am.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As for everyone else in this industry, COVID-19 pandemic was a terrible blow. Within a month, nobody had a reason anymore to wear my creations, a lot of customers had to renounce to their commissions because they lost their job and many colleagues, some of them are friends, shut down their activities. At cost of great sacrifices, I manage to stay in business. Even buying materials became difficult, because international shipping faced difficulties. Luckily, my studio is a part of my house so I could use it during lockdown periods and I used this sudden amount of free time to try out a lot. I learned to create resin masks and I found that I could create things much more like what I wanted to, but I did not have the courage to try yet. For this, I have to thank the invaluable help of dear colleagues with whom we exchanged advices during very long video calls to keep us company
Starting from that mask I made in March 2020, now I have 10 different mask models, with articulated jaws, resin eyes, real gemstone, and light effects, that will become 15 within half of this year. I think this is a good example of my resilience.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think that non-creatives often struggle understanding our job choice when it does not provide large sums. We are misjudged as dreamers, people disconnected from reality, lazy, being kept ones, or opinionated. I think that happens because everything concerning arts is considered just a hobby and something not pragmatic. After his first day, my very employee said that he though my job to be far more lucrative and less tiring. If even a friend was surprised when experience my job first-hand, what can anyone else think? This kind of job is a leap of faith and you have to dedicate everything: time, money, frustration, efforts, while being careful about your physical and mental health. It is the choice of those who have understood that it is better for their own mental balance to give up a secure salary every month, in order to share their vision of the world through music, painting, sculpture, digital art, writing or all the other wonderful arts.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChimericalDragonfly
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chimerical_dragonfly/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Chimerical.Dragonfly
• Other: https://chimerical-dragonfly.myshopify.com/

Image Credits
Kristina Chierici / Krystarka