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these are some stickers I've made. The ones on the left are my normal illustration style, and the rest are different characters I'm making for shirs, stickers, etc.
Tuomiokirkko, Turku. Tavastin kuorin portti detalji 1:1. Mittauspiirustus.
Piirtäjä: Aarne Eklund.
Tekniikka: tussi ja laveeraus, akvarellipaperi 370x270
Aalto student measurement drawings 1880-1919.
Aalto-yliopiston arkisto / Aalto University Archives
Drawing nr: D1_25_1_1916_009
Tiedätkö lisää tästä kuvasta? Jätä kommentti tai ota yhteyttä sähköpostitse: arkisto@aalto.fi
Lisätietoja kuvakokoelmista / more information: libguides.aalto.fi/c.php?g=578570&p=4667669
Training myself to draw has been an interesting exercise. I studied the workds of Nicolas de Crecy, the Rat Rod artists, Stephan Marjoram, R.Crumb, S.Clay Wilson and many others. While I certainly will never develop the kind of talent they had, this has been a good way to "kill time" during the various periods of lockdown here in France during the Covid Pandemic.
My move to B.C is delayed for only a few days. Monday will be the big move. Not a biggie. In the mean time, I was doing some final editing of the book’s text, and below is my preface that takes the reader into the book. I thought it might be of interest to read what motivates me as an artist, or not. That is up to you. Enjoy.
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ICONS AND IDOLS: POP GOES THE CULTURE.
An “Icon” is an image, a depiction or representation, a pictogram or likeness that stands for an object by representing it by analogy. By extension, the word “icon” is also used, as seen in popular culture, in the general sense of symbol—such as a name, face or edifice. Idolatry is considered a sin to the Christian religion, being defined as worship of any cult image or object as opposed to the worship of a God.
The modern era worships gods of a different kind: the cult of celebrity. The modern cult of celebrity and popular culture is saturated with both icons and idols. And so I thought that Icons and Idols a most pertinent title--and as a satire, the subtitle “pop goes the culture” is also apt.
Let's contemplate lionizing worship. Who are the biggest worshippers? Stanch religionists, of course. Worshippers pray on bended knee. I admire many of the individuals I capture in art, but I don’t worship them. There is big difference between admiration and worship. Worship is like admiration wearing blinders. Admiration is quality-oriented, not person-oriented. “It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste,” Albert Einstein said, “to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them,” he said in 1921. “This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate of me and the reality is simply grotesque.”
Critics have responded to my art as though I was sui generis, a self-created eccentric without discernable origins. Very much the opposite is the truth. The origin of my art is the culture at large. I painted and drew as if I were an alien intelligence contemplating my own human species from a distant realm with a bemused objectivity, as though I was encountering them for the first time like David Bowie’s Ziggy. What I saw was a strange land filled with archetypes---caricatures. I saw a vast and vacuous wasteland populated with grotesque caricatures as if standing before funhouse mirrors.
Yes, I am a reluctant fan of popular culture. I can’t totally make up my mind in estimating the value of pop culture and the people who create and comprise it. I have always suffered from a terrible ambivalence. Is it ridiculous or brilliant, beautiful or ugly? I now realize that it is all of these things. I am inspired by the memory of hundreds of hours of observing mass media and pop culture, but always with a mixture of awe and contempt. I have painted our culture as monstrous and fascinating, bizarre and theatrical, stirring and ridiculous, brilliant and banal, beautiful and ugly, innovative and slavishly conformist.
Our culture is a vast Cecil B. Demille tableau, a grotesque tragicomedy, as it is a heroic drama. It is brilliant as it is bizarre. The fractions of an inspired and insipid culture are scattered all about like a shattered mirror: some of the fragments reflect a beautiful glitter, but most of it will cut you. It is this mixture that you will see in my paintings and drawings. A personality can be complex; it can even contain contradictory elements---and I do think my art is a reflection of my own contradictory personality. I have always thrived on ambivalence and complexity. I am praising popular culture and simultaneously ridiculing it.
Just as there are degrees of visual acuity, there are also degrees of awareness: I have an active mind intent on understanding the world and the people in it. I am prepared to summon every conscious resource that will enable me to grasp the things of my concern. After all, part of what makes art “good” is the artist’s skill at capturing his worldview and essential concerns in his art. A work of art embodies a viewpoint about human nature and humankind’s place in the world, but not necessarily in some didactic manner. It is more or less an “intuitive feeling” one can garner from a given art work, not “objective facts.”
As for the “ugliness” of my art: By their very nature, my caricatures cannot come out decorous and beautifully detached; they must be (and are) charged with fear, horror, anger, humour, and irreverence. They are also inspired by love, passion and good-natured humour. After all, you need an extraordinary gift for humour to laugh away all the madness of popular culture.
It is believed that the art of any period is a faithful mirror of that culture’s philosophy. So when you see some of the monstrous and grotesque caricatures I create, the composite picture that emerges is merely a microcosm of your culture. In view of the responses I have received, my effort to achieve a highly stylized representation has succeeded with flying colours. This is, perhaps, where I came into trouble. Newton had taught us that for every action there is an equal opposite reaction, so it could be argued that the enormity of some people’s hysterical animosity toward me and my art had its own logic.
But to what, I ask, do I attribute homage when it is bestowed to me? Perhaps only this: I find that there are scores of people who agree with my artistic interpretation and who share my sense of humour. They have exercised their own independent judgement and saw the merit of my work. It is also the critics and media commentators, juggling its shrill adjectives like a 42nd street movie marquee---‘daring,’ ‘hilarious,’ ‘brilliant” ‘amazing’---among other Broadway-like ballyhoo---that vindicate my vision. I am confirmed in my conclusions about popular culture.
Pardon me if I sound a tad shrill, but I am an artist and it’s my business to feel more intensely about things. It was once said “love the artist, for he gives you his soul.” Truer words have never been spoken. Sadly, they were spoken as a bromide to people who did not understand their profundity. Yes, I have given you my soul---contradictory as it is. I have satirized your culture and made a mockery of it. I have reflected in caricature what I considered to be frightfully bizarre and inverted. Yes, I have done all of these things, but I have nonetheless paid this culture homage too. I know just how ridiculous and nihilistic and brilliant this civilization can be. I see it as the end and the beginning, as archetypical and superficial, as dark and light, disturbing and irresistibly funny. I look at the state of the culture and I feel as if I have landed on a truly bizarre planet. But I am held captive to it by its charms nonetheless. In the end, my own views toward pop culture are radically ambivalent. I can live with that.
The genre of caricature serves me best to carry my artistic vision. Caricature, like pop culture, can be beautiful and grotesque, inspired and funny. It exaggerates the truth, without distorting it, as is commonly thought. My motive for creating caricature art hasn’t change from the days of my childhood. It has only matured and expanded. As a child, I observed the adults moving about in the world and I captured it all as I drew—in admittedly crude snap shots. I absorbed what I took to be the essence of reality: a surreal carnival of mostly preposterous beings, stumbling in the dark of their own follies. For this same reason, it is the culture that I want to now caricature.
There’s a wonderful essay by George Orwell called “Why I Write,” in which he says that every great writer is motivated by two things: one, the desire to show off—and two: the habit of noticing unpleasant facts. This could very well be true of caricaturists of my ilk.
What I try to accomplish is to distil the essence of the offending and inspiring phenomenon found in popular culture into well chosen images, and give those images an ironic twist that will leave the viewer chortling inwardly with satisfaction. But along with savage indignation, you will also often find a playful and indulgent wink. It’s not all dark.
The decisive currency in my art is not sardonic derision, disdainful diminution for its own sake---but rather: to capture and report what I see which might effect change or not. Mind you, I don’t rate the success or failure of my art as to its effecting social change, but only on my ability to capture what I believe is the essence of my subject.
The playful and mischievous child in me has never died, but he does battle with the angry and frustrated idealist that also resides in me. If you ever feel demoralized, beleaguered, appalled or befuddled by the times we all inhabit, I’m simply trying to give a visual voice to those feelings.
Victor Pross, 2008
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A child's drawing for my Create a Creature
kids workshop. I asked the kids (ages 9 - 12 yrs) to first draw or paint their own animal creature.
on the bus. some strange dude i saw one day, looked odd and had a high pitched voice, as if he was really a she in drag.
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University of Glasgow Library
These handbooks are taken from the Students Representative Council records, collection reference DC157.
To see more of what we hold in this collection go to: cheshire.cent.gla.ac.uk/ead/search?operation=full&rsi...
One of my first drawings with the iPad application "LiveSketch". I love this application. I could not put it down last night.
I find this super interesting. It may take a while for me to figure out a use for it, but it will happen!
Waiting at the Glenside, PA train station to return to the airport after the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators conference. Inks.
this is the 3rd in a set of five wherewolf drawing i've done. this is a fineliner copy of the no 2 pic and my copy for other drawing to experament with diffrent form of media to colour in the form, i tryed colouerd pencils felt tip pens and others to but whent back to my style i call bubble/duddling art