Dali Homage Drawing

  For my Dali inspired homage-piece there were several aspects of his work I chose to focus on. First was the obvious surreal aspect of his paintings. Not being a painter I choose to use pencil (on paper) to create this piece. I had started out using a regular pencil, but then decided to use a mechanical pencil as it would allow me to get the finer detail I wanted without continually having to re-sharpened pencil. I knew what I wanted to incorporate in this piece, but throughout the process I just let my mind wander. There was no “real” picture in my mind and there was no exact way I wanted it to look. It was primarily line by line and detail by detail, which is one of my favorite ways of drawing, because you never know what you're going to create next. While working on the piece I kept in in mind certain aspects of his work. Some of the major ones I chose to include where the long stilts, drastically over dramatized figures, organic landscapes, and the feel of a deserted landscape. 

  My interpretation of this piece is mainly how it connects to Dali through his way of thinking and almost random nature of imagery. To me this piece highlights the emotions of sadness, remorse, curiosity, and tragedy.  
  Though I have not yet completed the piece I'm quite happy with how it turned out in relation to many of Dali’s works. Mostly I am happy because I was able to capture the style and thought process of one of the art worlds most creative and enigmatic minds.

Dali Homage-Piece Critique

  Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in Figures, Spain. Dali’s career began at a very early age. After almost an entire childhood of art Dali decided to go and study at an Academy in Madrid. Several years later during the 1920s, Dali spent a good amount of time in Paris. While living there he did more paining, incorporating techniques and artistic elements of well known artists, such as Magritte, Miró, and even Picasso. Miró was one of the key influences who sparked Dali’s interest into the world of surrealism. 

  My open ended question was, “In what way is realism portrayed within the surrealistic tendencies of Dali’s work?”

  Luke agreed that certain aspects of realism can be seen through Dali’s work, mentioning that much of it is shown through his human/animalistic figures and organic landscapes/shapes. Like others, Luke agreed that my piece was somewhat abstract, surreal, and weird and creepy. He told me that he liked the amount of detail I had included, and that it did in fact remind him a lot of Salvador Dali.

 For this piece I chose to use pencil and paper, (8.5 x 11, in Sketchbook). For this piece I decided to do one of my favorite pocket knives, my CRKT Ripple. I mainly choose to keep the focus on shading technique and level of detail/realism.  Because the handle of this knife is metal, reflection of the light source was another thing I had to keep in thought.  

 This piece was to not only show my attention too detail, but also my curiosity and passion for tools that many of us take for granted in our everyday lives. The piece is also intended to not only portray the knife’s aspect of functionality, but it’s beauty through design. Like most tools, this knife has it’s own story and history. Mainly this work tells the story of quality and reliability.

 As many noted in a recent critique, this piece shows the understanding of shading and detail. The one improvement suggested, which I also agreed with was the idea of including some background. Note, it would not be a background that would fill the page, but a background that only gave the viewer enough context and nothing more.

 This photo is an in-process drawing including an observation of to knives, one new, and one old. I choose these two objects for the main purpose of including more than just one object, and additionally due to my interest in their design. As one can see, these two knives have contrasting designs, both of which I hope to convey through crosshatch shading, as well as drawing them in perspective. I plan only on using the one shading technique, however I may decide to take a different approach, such as smudging especially if it will better help convey the objects’ realism.

Completed Camera Drawing

 For this piece I chose to use pencil and paper (11x17). As was mentioned in a previous blog post, this piece was intended be mainly a practice for studying freehand perspective and different shading techniques. There was a fair amount of time that was spent drawing and redrawing the lens portion. This is something that will just have to come over time with a decent amount of practice.

 When this piece was critiqued there was not very much constructive criticism. Many believed that the piece was well executed, especially in regard to the shading. Though it was well received by the audience, there are certain aspects, such as parts of the perspective which will have to be improved upon in the future. 

 As noted earlier the main strength of this piece is its shading. One of the primary reasons for this is because it was what the most time was spent on. Once again, improving the perspective would be most easily executed by taking more time to set up the structure of my drawing.

Lily Mae Martin Artist Comparison

 The artist I chose to compare my most recent piece with is, Lily Mae Martin. She  resides and works in Victoria, Australia. The piece of hers I chose is similar in two main ways. First off it is an older camera, an old Kodak Brownie to be specific. The second and most important reason is because she uses similar shading techniques such as crosshatching, and line weight using pencils with different softnesses. All lines in this work appear to be prominent and quite crisp. This causes it to really pop out at the viewer. 

In Process Camera Drawing (Minolta Maxxum 9000)

 This is an in process freehand drawing of an old Minolta camera. I originally started this piece because I needed several observational drawings in order to meet certain college portfolio requirements. As a lot of my artwork shows, I tend to be more abstractly and hands-on focused. I have done observational drawings in the past, but it was awhile back. My main goal for this piece was to use it as a way for me to delve into more observational drawing and different shading techniques as well as improve upon my freehand understanding of perspective.