Artist Post: Evgeny Parfenov

Evgeny Parfenov is a Russian freelance illustrator who has contributed his work to magazines such as Rolling Stone and GQ Magazine. I was really drawn to his work because he does a lot of celebrity illustrations and I secretly occasionally take interest in pop culture affairs. There is not much information about him and his biography, but a lot of his drawings are available online and I have recognized some of them in many magazines. The illustrations I was drawn to were of Nas (one of my favorite rappers), Joan from Mad Men (one of my favorite shows), and Stephen Colbert (also one of my favorite shows). I think Evgeny Parfenov was very accurate in capturing microexpressions in his art, such as Colbert's signature eyebrow raise. I couldn't tell which brush was used, but I noticed that he really emphasized brush strokes in adding dimensions and shadows to faces. I also liked his choice of backgrounds that he used, that tended to be subtle but also relatable to the subject. In Nas' portrait, there is a chained fence behind him, which seemed to fit in with his background; Colbert has an American flag that looks slightly distorted (which in my opinion kind of aligned with his satirical "distorted" look at America), and Joan has a very 1960s-esque yellow and orange background. Overall, Evgeny Parfenov was able to capture the expressions and personalities of each celebrity he drew without looking like he was overdoing it with dramatics and staying true to each subject.

Vector Artist: Helen Huang

I chose Helen Huang for my vector artist. She is primarily a fashion illustrator for books, but she's mainly a digital artist from LA who was born and raised in China. She is heavily influenced by Chinese cartoons and Manga. As a child, I really liked Manga which is why I was drawn to her art, especially because Manga is very relatable and the characters come to light through their illustrations. In an interview about her, she claims that her favorite Illustrator tool is the Color Panel because it works on highlighting and shading and mixing colors. She likes to work on balancing colors and toning hue and saturation. You can see specifically in shading, for example the shading in hair, and how the colors sort of blend into each other. I like that her art is very female-centered, since the main subjects in all of her drawings are women and sort of gives a vibe of female empowerment without losing its femininity. She incorporates lots of feminine things such as hearts and rainbows, which give the images a fun, childish look to it.

Charles Csuri

Charles Csuri is considered one of the fathers of digital art and computer animation. I was really drawn to Csuri's art because he mixes traditional forms of art -- such as drawing and painting -- with digitalized computer art. I have a little bit of background in drawing, which I really love to do, and it's interesting to see how he is able to incorporate that with digital art, and it has very much influenced me because it's directly related to my interests. I particularly like the piece "N-Spaces" which he took an angelfish and copied the image over and over again and created a sort of cubic texture, which completely distorted the former image and made it into such an interesting abstract combined image. The "Intersecting Planes" piece also does the overlapping of images and the way they are angled create a 3D effect. Overall, I think that Csuri's strengths lie in taking something ordinary and creating a whole new image through overlapping, playing with lines and spaces, and mixing painting in it as well, he sort of creates a hybrid of art. I also really appreciate the way he uses lines to create a human face, or a human body. I think it's significant because lines sort of take the viewer back to simpler times, when there were no computers to make art and it was a very specific, hard process. I Lastly, another piece by Csuri I found interesting was "Calligraphic" in which Csuri was very much influenced by Japanese art and calligraphy and created a digitalized version of another traditional form of art.

Project 1

Alberto Seveso

Alberto Seveso is a digital artist from Italy. He is known for his work in graphic design and Photoshop. He first began his work in the digital art world in the early 1990s because he was fascinated by graffiti, heavy metal band CD cover art, and skateboard deck art. From that inspiration, he went on to creating art on the computer, utilizing photography and illustration. Seveso is a freelance artist who is renowned for creating advertisements, most renowned for making Sony headphones ads. His most notable work to date is his high-speed photographs of ink in water. Basically, he would drop splashes of ink into water and then take photos of them dispersing. Here are some examples: I am particularly interested in photography which is why I was drawn to Seveso's work. I enjoy how he used Photoshop to digitize and emphasize the colors of the ink. In the article I read about him, it says that it was a long laborious process to set up the ink/water experiment and took multiple tries to photograph, which I appreciate. I think the significance in these photos is sort of capturing time in a freeze moment, sort of showing how we are able to take an instant in time that is normally so fast that in a blink of an eye we could not notice, but the high-speed effect is able to produce that rare moment. Additionally, in his photos, the ink doesn't even look like ink. I think it is just really fascinating how the ink is transformed to look like something so different, like bits of fabric or some other kind of similar texture.

Hybrid Collage

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik was a Korean-American artist who was one of the founding creators of digital media art as we know it today. Paik's work was a blend of science, art, and technology. He was notoriously recognized for his usage of television sets and integrating them into his installations. One of his most famous pieces, "Electronic Superhighway" (displayed below) is an example of how he used television to depict the influence media has on American culture.

Another famous work that Paik constructed was "TV Buddha." (below) This particularly stands out to me because the idea sort of crosses over an ancient Oriental religious figure and Western media, almost as if to create a statement that demonstrates that the media is also just as much as a powerful force. It is transcending and melding together a rich historic past and a materialistic, ever-consuming future. 

Overall, I think Paik's work is fascinating, as it shows the sheer power of the media and how it can shape our beliefs, attitudes, even our own cultures. As one of the artists who lay the foundation for digital art, Paik offers a lot of insight as to how different mediums can be crossed over and constructed to present a powerful statement about our media.