Our Inspirations
This thread is for discussing art and artists that inspire us to create and improve our own work. I personally am fine with people posting anything that fits that criteria – your artists don’t have to be big names, dead, fashionable, anything other than someone who inspires you. I’m not expecting anyone to write up a bio or history for their artists either – what I would like to see is –your opinion-. Hopefully we’ll get a nice collection of art with some good dialogue on what it means to us. Please do feel free to comment on other people’s artists and their reasons for choosing them.
So…I’ll start with one of my favorites, Gustav Klimt. He has a highly recognizable style, with a fondness for gold leaf, red headed women, and the use of intricate geometric patterns. He combines his ability to create depth and dramatic color and lighting with graphic 2D prints and bold materials, resulting in pieces with highly realistic elements and abstract patterns in the same painting.
The image above, Tree of Life, is part of a mural for the dining room of a famous house in Brussels called the Palais Stoclet. The ‘swirlies’ you see on the tree are repeated on other images and serve as a good example of his use of shape in his art. The scale of his work is breathtaking, something you can only really grasp by seeing the originals – I’d love to go and see this in person, bummer that the house isn’t open to visitors :\. He painted murals, panels, ceilings, designed to be displayed larger than life as part of the architecture.
Klimt’s work was labeled pornographic by some and erotic by many - he has some rather infamous sketches depicting women in various states of undress/pleasure – but I think what really makes some of his work appear overtly sexual is the eye contact his women sometimes makes with the viewer. On the other hand, I feel a lot of his pieces have an subtle innocence to them – like this one, The Sea Serpent:
I especially like the use of pattern in this piece and all the color and depth he puts into her skin while maintaining that clean lined graphic look. He tends to draw lean, long torso’ed women, sometimes elongating the midsection quite a bit past what could be considered proportional. This gives an elegant, almost otherworldly look to his subjects. I’m not sure how to describe his color, which is often times rather desaturated but occasionally explodes in bursts of gold and red and green. I like all the warm golds and reds in his art – I think he makes those colors look rich and soothing and sophisticated rather than overwhelming, perhaps because his other colors tend to be so mellow.
I am a sucker for conceptual game art though. PReilly is one of my favs on DA. I look for emotional depth in my favorites. Dark, bold colors or even a minimal of color like the linked pic. I like the rawness of the painting - you know exactly what that creature wants and it's not coffee cake and a cup of tea.
A few stood out and even offered tutorials for those of us interested. Alas only 1 of them is still to be found on the net. Laurie and Hurricane Seasons are long gone, Welshcat too.. but 4F remains. He is a god among men to me, his work is stunning in its realism yet surreal at the same time. It could be 3D it could be a photo. Just flipping through his trial galleries I had pangs of nostalgia.
I think the art form has seriously faded away some as when I did some googling for them all I came across were very very old sites. So few of those artists are left. Part of it could stem from with the birth of the net everyone assumed.. it's a pic on the net it's mine to take! When dealing with making those pics it was almost always a playboy pic or some other nudie used. It's really the only way to get a decent one IMO. Using a nude form to begin with I mean. Hell I originally got Poser thinking I would make the nude models and freehand the rest like I always did my manips. That was quickly forgotten when I discovered the depth of available stuff =D (and the whole NS photo bs.. anyhoo)
As for 3D inspirations.. my first came from a series of videos we used to buy called the Mind's Eye. Some of the coolest and earliest 3D animation films, short stories and such. Fascinating stuff. Then on NS came Blackaddar and Julie. I started dabling and they were huge inspirations to me (still are really).
To me his work has a romantic quality to it while still portraying a realistic subject. It is subjective realism and that's really what painting is about in a lot of ways...painting things the way you want them to be or using a painting as a warning or a message.
I did enjoy most of the fantasy artists that Eve mentioned as well. Franzetta's stuff was a bit dark and grainy looking for me but I always liked Brom,Vallejo,Bell and Parkinson as well.
I like Klimt and saw some of his work once in a museum here. Its bold and perhaps not as realistic as some but I think he has a way of making his ideas very clear with his pictures.
Like on DA, I have dstafiz, noahk, Goor, Ursulav, and quite a few. That shows just how diverse my likes run.
Then I do get inspired by Vallejo, Bell, Vargas, Brom, Michael Whelan, Parkinson, Rowena, Stephanie Pui Mun Law, etc...