Carlos Lirola

Carlos Lirola is my now traditional last minute inclusion. His sweeping, over powering urban vistas and huge exercises in delivering artistic technical perspective is brilliant and amazing.

Carlos is on twitter here

In addition Carlos has a very impressive website here

Carlos has demonstrated his technical ability with infographics, animations and technical drawings and there is a relationship between these types of media and the way that his art is presented.

There is blog space on the website where Carlos has offered comments - but to my shame I can't speak Spanish so I'm afraid I can't really give you much of the benefit of that.

Carlos is based in Malaga but his work is genuinely international and looks at urban spaces from Europe and America. I have to say that I have visited Malaga twice and I found it quite an inspirational space with mixture of old and new architectural styles - some very traditional old spaces influenced by the church, and new clean modern lines. The incredible sun light also helped!

Let's have a look at Carlos' bridges:

The bridges are given to us in strange perspectives - perspectives that we would rarely consider. They give us both the beauty and the grotesque quality of their construction. There is both a sense of huge strength and also disrepair and vulnerability. He takes us up high to low down, he takes us right to the foot of the construction to look up - where we can feel tiny. There is a matter of fact technical quality that defies glamour and speaks about the blue collar roots of how these bridges were built - but then within that something that is undeniably awesome and therefore quite cinematic. It's like a presentation of a bridge as a piece of blue collar installation art.

Carlos has also painted a series of urban skyscapes - I use this image of New York as an example:

Looking across at Manhatten Island we have again a paradox between the undeniable glamour and excitement of the American highrise skyscraper and also the grimey, poluted quality of living in such a vast city. This is all very candid. The level of detail is incredible and it must take enormous patience to produce these works.

Now (above) we're looking down on a street. You could imagine this as a scene from the Bronxs or from Harlem - looking down into the city streets - that distinctive yellow cab a sign of where in the world you are. Perhaps the two limos suggest we are more upmarket in our neighbourhood - nevertheless the light gives us darkness and a slightly dirty, gritty quality.

Now we're in London in the underground (Charing Cross). I think this is my favourite actually. The film posters are amazing (is that a 'Pulp Fiction' poster?), the urban graffiti, you can feel the underground breeze caused by the vaccum of the moving vehicles - the smell of the vehicles - the noises... This is incredibly evocative.

So contrast these paintings with the following:

The European settings - these distinctly Spanish settings (Malaga above, Alcaniz below) give us a world much older and more traditional to art than the urban environments of New York or London. The presentation has obvious similarities that are particular to the artist - perspective of looking up at or through the architecture. There is the same fascination with structural angles, edges and archways.

I look at the colours in the lower images - the earthy quality of the stonework - which conveys such age and dignity in the buildings - and I reconsider my earlier comment about Charring Cross and think that this is my favourite instead.

Carlos Lirola is a marvellous artist who gives you something that you can sit and marvel at for a while. Take a bit of time and really enjoy. It's quite immersive and very enjoyable. It's also incredibly skillful.

  

Joanne Chadwick

I mentioned in an earlier post how I created a portrait of Joanne Chadwick. She's actually the first artist that I've illustrated, although I've been tempted to do Salvador Dali.

Joanne is actually a superb artist in the fine art tradition. Both her portraiture and landscape work are very impressive.

You can visit Joanne on twitter here

She also has her own blog site which displays some of her work here

Let's start with her portrait work:

This portrait of Mick Jagger is the best I've seen of him. I was in a gallery in Cambridge recently and they were displaying some of the paintings that Ronnie Wood has created of his band mates. The prints alone are selling for £1500 each. For me they are no where near this quality at all.

I'm getting all kinds of things from this. Movement, exitement, the stage lights and playing around the edges of the image and in the hair. You've got all the character lines and the mojo - it's just superb.

Two female portraits here of contrasting characters who both have boho qualities in their own way - uber posh Helena Bonham Carter and tragic genius Amy Winehouse.

I'll be honest - I've tried to do a portrait of Amy Winehouse before and I failed utter because I couldn't capture what has been secured here so easily. The combination of obstinate intransigence mixed with glamour, chic and beauty - and that other piece of x factor.

Helena Bonham Carter is also shown with that multi dimensional quality - pour character out of every line and colour. Frenetic hair, shadows, and contrast. I just love that neither of these portraits are smiling and that is so much more of a challenge in itself. 

Now enjoy this picture of Ted Hughes:

It's brilliant. The context is perfect. He looks happy to be cold and windsweep and possibly saturated with rain. The slate grey and dark blue in the sky is at war with the shards of light to give the feeling of one of those dark days. The texture of his skin - and again his ruddiness and the line of shadow are so compelling. I love the detail of the hair just coming across the face, the touch of pink in the cheek, nose tip and chin say everything about how cold that picture is. Despite that, it retains some warmth and heaps of ambiguity. Is he cross, is he about to smile?

Joanne's landscapes are also a real joy:

I've picked just three from a wonderful broad collection. The image above is particularly evocative for me because my dad's uncle worked with heavy horses and kept a shire he called Peggy that he used to plough a series of allotments in Barnsley.

These images are very special in my eyes. They have texture and feel and mood in great quantities. It's like a fond memory.

The image above is almost like a mirage in so many ways. I really enjoy the depth and the darkness and the sense of being able to wade into that long grass.

My final pick from the landscapes was this family of pigs. I was really caught by how Joanne has captures the coarse hairy quality of the pigs as they snuffle around.

Joanne offers the following about herself:

M J Forster

This is another one for whom I am late to the party. M J Forster is a British artist who is currently based in Northumberland, but has spent a considerable amount of time travelling the world to improve his art through experience. I think this is incredibly brave and I find that dedication to art inspiring.

Matt works predominantly in watercolour - and I'll be honest - I'm not usually drawn to or struck by watercolour. I often find that water colour lacks the vibrancy and contrast that I'm looking for and in the hands of the wrong person I think it can be flat and bland.

None of that applies to what I am about to show you.

First of all Matt is very well established on twitter (130k followers! Wow!):

He has his own gallery - and you can visit it online here

M J is selling his larger works from £850 and upwards and to be honest it's fantastic to see a British artist doing well.

While he has a range of impressive nudes online (which tend to show what I would call an honest view of the female form - not particularly stylised or 'air brushed') I was drawn in by his range of landscapes in what he calls 'Uber Art' - literally a style of art that is slightly over done or over emphasised:

This a style that is modern in the artistic definition. They make me think of the type of continental posters that used decorate the walls of French and German class at school, and also the 1930/1940s home front propaganda images too.

Despite the fact that it is water colour, there is a brilliant (and I mean that in a literal sense) quality to it. They have a very robust 'in your face' style. I think Matt has shown that this style in watercolour can present a hot or cold ambience. I'm also getting a lot of depth and dimensions - different lines intersecting each other, presenting boundaries and layers. Without giving very much detail at all the work is recognisable and utterly convincing. It is economical and familiar at the same time.

I actually want to go on holiday in one of these images. Which makes me think about Andy Warhol and the achievement of making an image both commercially viable and genuinely artistic too. 

 

Moving on from the tremendous Uber Art, I also love this artist's presentation of doors. We touched upon how magical doors can be, and particularly in the work of Vamekh Kokhreidze. Check out these doors:

These doors actually take me (personally) to Malta, which is a place that I love. There is a vibe about them that is evocative of North Africa or the Med, and the sense of disrepair gives a sense of casual laid back cool, rather than poverty or neglect.

Again, I'm loving the contrast between light and dark too. The shadows are excellent and thoroughly convincing. Again, even with the doors we have depth, and temperature too. Cold stone stairs leading upward to warm sunshine, for example.

Matt shows further diversity and range with a number of abstract pieces which are unrestrained and I just don't feel like I can offer any commentary on to be honest. I just struggle with highly abstract concepts like that.

If you visit the artist's own website you can find out more about him personally and his inspiration and purpose - I picked this to share with you here:

  
Simply reading that has given me a better understanding and appreciation for watercolour painting.

I'd definitely recommend that you follow this guy - I think he's very popular for a good reason.

Kurt Cobain in Pencil and other things

I started a new job this week and the hours have actually made it quite difficult to draw and illustrate. It has just kind of thrown me out of a rhythm. This being said, I've got four pieces to share. Quite varied - there's no theme here, I've just allowed myself to do what I'm tempted by.

The first piece that I attempted was this portrait of American journalist and media figure, Oprah Winfrey. I think her achievements in US and global journalism, film and culture are difficult to appreciate. She's definitely underrated - possibly because she is financially astute and commercially successful. This shouldn't obscure our appreciation of what she has done for equality, liberal politics, literacy and a number of other fundamental good causes. As a woman, and as a black person, she is a torch bearer. There is nothing in her presentation that makes her inaccessible to men or other racial groups either.

Anyway I wanted this picture to be bold and convey her bright presentation and energy. I also wanted to avoid my usual style of portraiture because I didn't think it would put her character across, so I tried something more modern and less traditional instead.

 

After I painted Oprah I decided to create a portrait of the Dalai Lama - but following on from Oprah I wanted this to be even more figurative and I wanted to bring his philosophy and relgious belief into the picture as part of his physical appearance.

I moved from this piece to something more familiar and traditional. A simple pencil sketch, returning to a man who has inspired me many times - Kurt Cobain.

I did this really quickly because I did want to do something but I was short on time. I was surprised that when I shared this on Niume and Twitter it got shared a good bit and drew some compliments. Let's be fair - some of that is the appeal that Kurt Cobain still has and the fact that people genuinely want to remember him and see him stay in the currency of modern culture. I can understand that.

Then I drew inspiration quite unexpectedly - isn't that the best type of inspiration. I recently encountered Joanne Chadwick through twitter - and there will be more regarding Joanne's art in a follow up post. Anyway. Joanne has a wonderful twitter picture - it's very undoctored in appearance and has a kindness and honesty about it that I thought was very appealing. So I used it as the basis of a portrait:

 

This picture came really easy actually - I sometime find some portraits need a lot of revisiting and tweaking before I feel happy - but just about every aspect of this was enjoyable.

Thanks for reading - do leave comments!

Vamekh Kokhreidze

Another artist that has recently followed me is Vamekh Kokhreidze from Georgia. Click on the images below to visit his sites:







Vamekh's art is dominated by bold brush strokes. There is a strong sexual motif through a number of his portraits with sensuality ranging to eroticism.

There is a coy quality to this image (above). All of these images are dominated by pose and form. There is a text book fantasy quality in all of them. If the image above was clothed it would be positively demure. The naked full figure of the female captured, including the tumbling hair, with the right arm tucked away behind as a counter point to the left hand positiin to the chin - it captures a moment of chemistry. 

The image shown above seems far more exhibitionist and playful - it has the same celebratory quality that revels in the naked female shape. The curves of the subject are beautifully conveyed.

This image of a woman's naked legs on tip toe is incredibly sensual. It conveys so much with so little. Strong strokes paint give you everything that is needed, combined with a contrast between the illumination of light working against dark colours.

The images above and below are the most erotic of the collection. The dark quality of both images seems to emphasise the more overt nature of the sexual content. It is the position of the left hand in the lower image that gives the intent to the piece - with a certain sense of ambiguity contrasted between the dark forefront and the over the shoulder highlights of blonde colour. This is brilliant and very enjoyable. Art has always been about sexual liberation and the deconstruction of boundaries and fantasies.

This isn't the only subject matter that preoccupies Vamekh. I've also really enjoyed his landscape images:

Two of his bridges show above show a contrast. The top image apears to be a robust, sturdy industrial bridge that leads off into a far vanishing point. It works with distance and perspective, the tops of buildings just appearing at the far end. There is a darkness in the foreground and a light in the sky towards the back of the image - it feels like an escape route, or maybe a journey home.

By contrast the bridge in the lower image is clearly running across the picture and it is a rickety looking construction with individual planks and maybe even a missing piece. We can see a luminous liquid surface beneath - which is beautiful, but again has an industrial, possibly poluted quality. I think - at least in my mind the state of disrepair and neglect in the bridge emphasises the possibility that this is a polluted, neglected scene. Tufts of green make it look over grown. What appears to be a fallen hand rail to the left plays into this quality.

 

I also wanted to show this piece (above). I really love it. In fact I love the brush strokes generally in this artist's work. The room at the back of the piece promises a window, and natural light - the room the viewer is in seems dark and gloomy, uncarpeted and squat like. This is either a scene of refurbishment - a work in progress - or a squat. And I love both ideas - they both speak about art in my mind. It's a journey, a transition. There is an obvious concept that the door has been dismounted from the frame in the piece. The fact that the door is slightly higher to the left, rather than the right, as it lays on the floor makes me indulge a surreal fantasy that it's not dismounted at all. That it could open and reveal another dimension beneath. I'm not sure if this is intentional.

Vamekh has just over 3,000 followers on twitter and I'd recommend that you should add yourself to the number.

Kelli Gedvil

I don't choose who to write about on here. Actually, they choose me. Pretty much.

Usually I'm on Twitter or Niume and someone follows me or I encounter someone, and their work strikes me and I have no choice.

There's one or two that I've blogged about on here where I had to give it some thought - but generally that's how it happens. The art chooses me.

Introducing Kelli Gedvil is a classic example of how this goes.

You can visit Kelli on twitter  - her account is shown above (click on it to visit her). She has a modest and very respectable following of some 8,000 people (a good deal more than I have following me).

Kelli also has a very impressive multi-lingual website here

Kelli has an incredible gift with colour. Her work reminds me - to some extent - of Leonid Afremov (who I have previously blogged about some weeks ago). I love his use of colour and contrast, and the same is true with Kelli.

The use of the colour blue, in both of the images above and below is quite incredible. While the blue in both pictures is deeo abd squeezes the composition just a little bit the explosions of yellow and green make the compositions 'pop' and offer depth in both instances.

This autumnal image of Talin (below) sizzles with seasonal overtones. It is celebratory and offers a love and an enjoyment of the leaves falling from the trees. It is like the aftermath of a mardi-gras that was Summer. This is an utterly fearless use of colour - just look at the spectrum that is on display here:

This cherry blossom is positively exploding off the surface of this image (below) - the use of shadow to the right hand side is working so well, supporting the texture of the bold pinks and purples that adorn the tree. 

The next two images that I have chosen to highlight (are in my opinion) very special indeed. The first image - entitled 'Vajdahunyad Castle' is like a fantastical riot of colour. The deepest layer of the painting appears to be errupting every colour - white, peach, yellow, firey reds, blues, acquamarine - we're seeing clouds and trees and swirls of mist, warm smoke - this is incredibly evocative. The castle itself is bold and bright - but the fine lines seems to animate and detail the piece all at the same time. I can also almost feel wind moving through this image, it has a rustling, jostling, living quality. It is so dynamic.

Beneath this I have chosen to show you a piece entitled 'Ravilla Park':

This is abstract, and for me, beginning to journey towards Picasso. The surreal use of colour continues here - but it is framed with recognisable parameters - steps, a bridge, a horizon - which holds this picture in place (there is an element of Van Gogh's style in those stairs actually). Again there are explosive qualities. There is a molten, melting, volcanic quality to this picture. I genuinely think it's wonderful.

Kelli Gedvil is just 21 years old and her work is more than promising. I haven't communicated directly with Kelli, but simply from visiting her twitter and her website it is revealed that she is an Estonian artist. She writes about her art form being a source of empowerment and expression. She already sells her work internationally, and at 21 years old I think that is a great achievement.

This week's art

Usually by this time in the week I have four, five, maybe seven different pictures that I have produced over the course of the week. I'm finding that I'm producing far less and I taking more more time over what I do create.

There are two pictures (only two!) this week - and they are utterly different. Couldn't be more different actually.

The first came from an idea that I had.

I wanted to present the United Kingdom Independence Party (who I loathe) in a single satirical picture, and I had this circus idea going around my mind.

If anything about this image causes any offence, I'll tell you now, I'm not sorry. I don't like to cause offence - I don't set out with that in mind - but this picture is definitely a statement of how I feel about this ring wing political organisation.

There's a lot going on here, and I wanted to present a surreal nightmare that is overwhelmingly busy and uncomfortable and crowded.

With my previous piece - 'Apocalypse How?' I talked the piece through quite thoroughly to give the viewer my purpose and meaning. I'm not going to do that, but if anyone does want to talk about this piece with me or ask me any questions, please do leave a message for me or catch up with me on twitter (@PublicPriestley).

I was happy with how this came out - it's more or less what I had in my mind's eye.

The second piece was a challenge that I set for myself.

I have been reading about, and listening to lectures on, Johannes Vermeer. So I turned my attention to one of his most famous paintings - The Girl With The Pearl Earring.

 

And this is the result. While I'll acknowledge immediately that I haven't captured that Dutch Realism style and it's a bit more impressionistic than the original, it is nonetheless better than I thought I could produce and as a result I was very happy with the outcome. 

I have tried to reproduce Van Gogh previously - and as with that you have to say, particularly without training - you're setting the bar very high to try and approach a genius. I give myself that. I think anyone would approach this and say 'Ah isn't that...'. They'll never approach it and wonder if it's Vermeer (I would hope!) - but the reproduction is recognisable - so I'm happy with that.

I also reflect on the images that I was producing only weeks ago and I realise that this would have been well beyond me at that time. So there is some progress.

I'm really very happy with the earring itself and although I have since softened the eyes a bit - even in this version, I'm really quite happy with the eyes. The shadow work also pleases me too.

Her complexion is a little pale and a little flat and the texture of the fabric could also improve - but hey - if I can see that, I can work on it.

Thanks for looking at my work this week.