Tag: drawing

Henry Moore

Henry Moore, “Mother and Child and Figure Studies”, Mixed Techniques on Paper, Colored Crayon, Charcoal, Pencil, Ink and Gouache, 25.5 x 18 cm

According to the Henry Moore Foundation, this work is probably page 7 from the Upright Sketchbook 1942. “ Although all known drawings of the sketchbook are horizontal, it is numbered upper right on the recto and upper left on the verso in vertical format…. The recto is interesting in that it provides the sketches for two larger drawings.”

Walter Oltmann

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The Artwork of Walter Oltmann

Born in 1960 Walter Oltmann went to school and completed his Fine Arts Degree in Kwa-Zulu Natal. His father worked as a civil servant and the family moved between one remote area of Kwa-Zulu Natal to the next. This migratory life style exposed Walter Oltmann to the rich craft tradition of rural South Africa.

Oltmann recalls the rigorous training in drawing that university art students underwent at the time. Drawing skills were seen as a foundation to build the rest of one’s art making practice on.  His teachers “made it clear to us that drawing should be a regimen in one’s creative practice and also a way of thinking as an investigative activity”. The mastery of drawing skills has translated well into Oltmann’s interpretation of the mastery of traditional craft skills that are to be found in South Africa.

Walter Oltmann’s work can be divided into two main areas of practice: drawing (pencil, ink and bleach) and sculpture (wire work). He is a master at manipulating both two-dimensional and three-dimensional line. A thread runs through the prints that he made at The Artists’ Press: “While I have dabbled with lithography, this is my first real adventuring into it. The thread of the pencil line moves into wire which moves into polymer plate and then is transferred onto paper”.

The embossed quality of the letterpress printing gives an added tactile dimension to the work. The spirit of the wire work has translated well into print. The hand-made quality of the woven and knotted wire sculptures objectifies the aspect of time passing – the viewer grasps time as a tangible quality embodied in the material.  This aspect also carries over into the drawings and prints that Walter Oltmann makes.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, “Minotauro y Caballo (The Minotaur and the Horse)”, 1935, Pencil on Paper, Museum Picasso, Paris, France

Picasso never committed to a specific explanation of his symbolism: “…this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”

Years after the completion of Guernica, Picasso was still questioned time and time again about the meaning of the bull and other images in the mural. In exasperation he stated emphatically: “These are animals, massacred animals. That’s all as far as I’m concerned…” But he did reiterate the painting’s obvious anti-war sentiment: “My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art.”

Sebastian Del Grosso

Sebastian Del Grosso, Photographic Sketches

A skilful artist has brought his selfies to life – by sketching himself into the picture to make the photographs look like paintings. Sebastien Del Grosso, 33, from Paris, first came up with the idea when he wanted to update his Facebook profile picture and has since developed a quirky collection of images.

After taking a self-portrait, the digital artist started to sketch himself into the picture. But rather than completely transforming his pictures into a complete sketch, the artist only partially adapted the original pictures, creating an interesting composite effect. This is then used to make the photographs appear in part like black and white paintings.

“The drawings are done with a simple pencil on a sheet of paper. The pencil strokes are fast and nervous, and so give the impression of a construction. Then, my “dodge and burn” effect is used a lot in the final rendering. It is in fact a multitude of brush strokes, black or white, which serve to highlight, or rather mitigate some facial features, and clothing. This treatment is intended to look like a little more like a painting than a photo. Then the drawing is scanned, cleaned and added to the picture with Photoshop tools.” -Sebastian Del Grosso

My thanks for finding this artist to a great blog http://art4gays.tumblr.com

Bicycles

Bicycles Drawings and Renderings

In 2009, artist Gianluca Gimini started asking friends and strangers of all ages to draw a bicycle by heart onto a sheet of paper. The drawings were digitally rendered by Ginluca Gimini. The results created a fascinating collection of bicycle designs.

“Soon I found out that when confronted with this odd request most people have a very hard time remembering exactly how a bike is made. Some did get close, some actually nailed it perfectly, but most ended up drawing something that was pretty far off from a regular bicycle. Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t.” -Gianluca Gimini

Thanks to http://twistedsifter.com for the images.

Georges Desvallieres

Georges Desvallieres, ”Ball Players”, Pastel, 1894

A native of Paris, Desvallières was a great-grandson of academician Gabriel-Marie Legouvé, and received a religious upbringing. He studied at the Académie Julian with Tony Robert-Fleury and with Jules Valadon at the École des Beaux-Arts. He painted portraits at first, but a relationship with Gustave Moreau turned him towards an interest in mythology and religion.

Desvallières became acquainted with ancient art during a trip to Italy in 1890, and upon his return began working in the style with which he was most associated, combining dark subjects and violent color with a dramatic conception of religion. He took as his subjects numerous symbolist characters, such as Narcissus (1901), Orpheus (1902), and The Marche Towards the Ideal (1903). He also served as one of the founders of the Salon d’Automne.

James Henry Daugherty

James Henry Daugherty, “Construction Workers”, Black and Sepia Conte on Paper, 1936

james Henry Daugherty lived in Indiana, Ohio, and at the age of 9 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he studied at the Corcoran School of Art. Later, he went to London and studied under Frank Brangwyn. During World War I, he was commissioned to produce propaganda posters for various US Government agencies, including the United States Shipping Board.

In September 2006, controversy erupted at Hamilton Avenue School, an elementary school in Greenwich, Connecticut, over Daugherty’s depiction of Bunker Hill hero and Connecticut native Israel Putnam in a mural commissioned by Public Works of Art Project for the town hall, and installed in the school in 1935.

The mural was restored, and revealed a scene, filled with violent and richly-colored imagery, including snarling animals, tomahawk-wielding American Indians, and a half-naked General Putnam strapped to a burning stake. School officials objected to the violent imagery, and ordered the mural removed to the Greenwich Public Library.

This was a study for a mural in the Social Room of Fairfield Court in Stamford, Connecticut.

Willie White

Willie White, “Birds and Crosses”, Self-Taught Artist, Felt Tip Markers on Paper

A retired gent with a mesozoic vision, Willie White, a self taught artist from New Orleans, sold felt marker landscapes like “Birds and Crosses”, from his Central City front porch. He painted odd animals but the women he painted were odder, at times resembling those obscene “Sheela-na-gig” female gargoyles that can be seen exposing themselves above strategic portals on ancient Irish cathedrals.

Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier, “Bull”, Collage of Colored Paper and Newspaper, Gouache, Indian Ink and Charcoal on Paper, 1963

Le Corbusier was visionary writer, theorist, and architect, and a lesser-known painter. Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, he adopted his moniker when he began to author architectural designs and paintings. He had a fascination with proportion, modularity, and geometry, often taking his cue from classical architecture theory. His designs, however, were modernist and industrial. He fondly called houses “machines for living in,” and said that the base principal for design is that “it must be beautiful.”

Le Corbusier was interested in solving what he called the problem of urban co-habitation, and produced a great number of designs for houses and apartment buildings. Le Corbusier worked at the atelier of Peter Behrens, the training grounds of other architectural masters like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman, “Untitled: Model for Trench, Shaft and Tunnel”, 1977. Charcoal, Chalk, Adhesive Tape and Pencil on Paper, 157 x 213 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Amsterdam

Born in December of 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman’s artwork spans a broad range of mediums, including sculpture, neon works, photography, video, drawing, printmaking and performance art. He studied physics and mathematics from 1960 to 1964 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later art from 1965 to 1966 at the University of California under sculptor and ceramicist Robert Arneson and painter and sculptor William T. Wiley. 

In 1964, Nauman gave up painting to dedicate his work to sculpture and collaborations in performance and cinema with painter William George Allan and experimental film director Robert Nelson. He also worked as an assistant to landscape and figure painter William Thiebaud. After his graduation from the University of California with a MFA, Nauman taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1968 and at the University of California at Irvine in 1970.

Much of Bruce Nauman’s work is characterized by his interest in language, the nature of communication, and the inherent problems with language as a communication. He made use of neon as a medium in many of his works through his career. Besides bringing new life to his assemblages of ordinary objects, neon connotes a sense of advertising. Nauman would use neon for his 1985 “Hanged Man” to emphasize its private, erotic imagery.

At the end of the 1960s, Nauman was constructing enclosed, claustrophobic rooms and corridors; upon entering, visitors would experience a sense of abandonment and confinement. His 1971 “Changing Light Corridors with Rooms” consisted of a long ,dark corridor with rooms at either end containing flashing bulbs timed at different rates. Since the mid 1980s, Nauman has worked primarily in sculpture and video, in which he developed both psychological and physical disturbing themes. 

Bruce Nauman has been represented since 1968 by the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York and Galerie Konrad Fischer in Dusseldorf and Berlin. His work is in many public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Brandhorst in Munich, the Soloman R Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, and the Tate Modern in London.

Børge Bredenbekk

 

Børge Bredenbekk, Untitled, (Birds in Flight), Drawing on Paper

Born in 1975, Norwegian Artist Børge Bredenbekk grew up in Stavanger and studied for a BA (Hons) Art and Design in England 1993 to 1997. He started out working with design and illustration for large clients in Switzerland and New York. Bredenbekk then worked from his home in Oslo and Fredrikstad with a focus on drawing and printmaking.

Børge’s work combines different technical skills with a keen eye for storytelling, carefully considered compositions and bold visuals. His work is divided in two styles and embraces craft and execution. His drawings are usually pencil and charcoal based and his graphic work inspired by 1930s aestethics and social realism.

 

 

James Bertucci

Pencil Drawings and Watercolor Titled “Passage” by James Bertucci

James Bertucci is a national award winning artist who has an emphasis in representational painting and sculpture techniques. James’ artwork has recently been exhibited in galleries of New York, Laguna Beach, Washington D.C. and Chicago.

James interest in art began at age three. At age 6, he won a District Award as the outstanding student in all of Will, Kendall and Grundy counties of Illinois for his artwork. His piece entitiled the “Illinois State Cardinal” was published in the Illinois Reading Council Journal at age 7. James credits his high school teachers and mentor for 11 years, John Tylk for developing his skills. Bertucci studied under artist John Tylk at age 5, who taught him drawing and painting skillls along with introducing him to various techniques and approaches to art.