Airbrush artists don’t get a lot of respect. I completely believe that is a painting - I did airbrush portraits for a few years, and even as an amateur I was able to create amazing skin tones. The tool is perfect for that. Photoshop has stolen the thunder of the airbrush, since you can easily create the same effect without the skill. But as one who has created tremendously inferior works like Tica, I can say without hesitation that it is a painting.
Wow.
A modern Dutch painter, Henk Helmantel, paints serene still-lifes in the style of the Dutch masters like Vermeer. He is hugely succesful. To have a “Helmantel” on the wall is the hallmark of Dutch Nouveau Riche.
And while I’m tooting my countrymen’s horn, how about the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf? His Royal Blood series is fascinating and gruesome.
Ron Mueck is mind-blowingly fantastic.
I was lucky enough to see one of his pieces up close (it’s part of the new collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario). The details are incredible… things like stubble, freckles, pores, subtle skin tone variations, but in unreal dimensions and proportions. I’d highly recommend going to see one of his shows if the opportunity comes up.
Very nice work, at least in the technical sense. I’m just not a huge fan of hyper-realism.
I agree. I have this great technique for creating beautiful, perfectly realistic art; it’s called a camera.
You can go really fast if you get into a car. That doesn’t stop us from admiring people who can run as fast as a car.(The Olympic games are set up for us to enjoy people doing things like running and throwing stuff that could have been done much better with a machine)
I agree, the beauty and creativity of Realism is in how the artist achieves it not so much in what he creates.
Tica is fake, though.
Exactly - it still needs to have been “seen”, i.e., processed by a mind and soul.
That painting/photograph/whatever of Tica is boring, to me. Just an image.
eta - I’m glad you guys are enjoying Shane’s work, I thought you would. That blond child he painted is my friend’s son. I don’t see a lot of living, not-famous-yet artists whose work intimidates me. Shane’s does.
(The main gallery is probably not safe for some workplaces, although the thumbnails are pretty small.)
I’m enjoying all the links in this thread.
See, photographs, as signs, are both indexical (the light that touched whatever is being photographed also touched the film) and symbolic (they represent what once existed). Hyper-Realism is only symbolic, never indexical. On some deep, primal level we feel these differences, the hyper-realistic painting is a shallow experience because, even if it represents something that once existed, the object itself has no physical link to that existance.
(This is why photographs seem so magical and also why painting was declared dead in the early 60’s, but that’s for another thread.)
Go to Dru’s site
His airbrush work is incredibly detailed. Unless you believe that Star Trek is a documentary then there is the proof of his attention to detail.
A personal favourite of mine is “Deliverance” showing a helicopter banking over a jungle river.
I like his still lifes.
So this past August I was able to study with Shane for a week! He taught a workshop in his hometown, to which I also have ties & so I had a place to stay & old friends to visit while I was there.
So anyway – wow! How cool, to learn about someone whose work I admire and then take his class!
He did several demos and we learned that it takes him 20+ hours to do those drawings. They’re graphite and he mostly uses HB or 2B pencils, which totally surprised me. On Mi-Tientes paper, which I still don’t like. And those drawings are not large! He brought a few and I was surprised to see they were no more than 14" tall!
The chances of catching him in the US again are probably remote, he’s in Paris now, but if anyone’s interested in the methodology, it’s called the Bargue (sp?) School. After Charles Bargue, who developed the curriculum in the 1800’s.
Good stuff! 