This week was filled with a lot of learning and inspiration,
followed by bit of application. Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist has been a
great source of motivation for me ever since I was introduced to it during my
Critical Perspectives in Design class with Barbara Littman. (Check her out by
the way! She's a great designer. While you're at it, check out her awesome penthouse apartment in NYC!)
Kleon advises you to steal everything that’s worth stealing.
That doesn't mean you should try to imitate your favorite artists' work, but you should
steal the ideas that you love. Kleon reminds us that “imitation is not
flattery.” He also goes on to quote
Francis Ford Coppola with, “We want you to take from us. We want you, at first,
to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we will give you
and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice.
And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you.”
Thanks to various forms of media, I had quite a lot to steal
from this week. First, I was hit with a super-cool recommendation from a coworker,
Danny, called Bomb It. It’s a documentary that follows graffiti artists all
over the world. From “taggers” who write their names on everything around so
that they can show the world they exist, to artists creating paintings towering stories high-- the entire documentary is jam-packed with inspiration. Two of the coolest artists from the documentary (also shown to me by Danny prior to Bomb It) are called Os Gemeos, or The Twins. They're identical twin brothers who cover the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil with their yellow-skinned, squinty-eyed figures of men and women. These paintings are not only awesome looking, but they are often containing subtle social and political messages.
Doing some online browsing, I also stumbled upon an artist named Michael Lang, and wow... What a gem of a find! His work totally hit home with me, and I fell in love with his style instantly. His work usually contains faces sporting over-sized eyes and abstracted features, and the moment I saw the first painting, I knew I had to steal some ideas and do my own version.
I started experimenting with different facial expressions and emotions inspired by Lang's contemporary style, but I wanted to put my own twist on it. I let Os Gemeos inspire me a little bit with the yellow skin, but I definitely want to do some paintings allowing more of the brother's style to come through me. (Maybe next week!)
Anyway, here are the paintings that I did the past few days. It really enjoyed making these! (From left to right: Flirtatious Business Man, The Kiss):
These seem a bit caricature-esq, cartoonish, Lang-y, and yellow... but personally, I think they're really fun. :-) I've still been committing my time to painting, but I'm loving it. We'll see what next week brings!
Committed only to creativity...
-Amber