Ai Wei Wei (Lego Portriats)

Ai Wei Wei is a Chinese contemporary artist known for producing sculptural installations and architectual projects such as: Sunflower seeds, Circle of Animals/Zodiac heads, Foever (Bicycles), etc. But the ones I’m particuarrly interested in are this LEGO portraits.

Why do I like it/ what do they mean to me?

I like how he creativly uses various types of Lego bricks to create the portraits and the primary and secondary he uses to capture the shape, shadow and distinction in the facial features. The connection they have to me is ever since I was a child, I’ve always loved lego, collecting or building, so his work feels like a combination of two things I like, Lego and Art.

Doc Martens (Shoes)

These are Doc Marten brand leather shoes that were originally created by the Griggs family in the small town of Northamptonshire in the English Midlands and were named after a German soilder named Dr Klaus Martens, Griggs acquired the license in the late 1950s, which resulted in a collaboration between Griggs and Marten creating the Dr Martens 1460.

Why do I like them and what do they mean to me?

I like how smart, fashionable and practical they are and one of my favourite shoe brands.

https://www.drmartens.com/uk/en_gb/history

New York Landmarks

The Empire State Building
The Statue of Liberty
The one World trade centre
The Flatiron Building
The 9/11 Memorial Muesuem
The Brooklyn Bridge
Ellis Island
The Chysler Building

Why do I like them and what do they mean to me?

Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to go to New York and see the unique architecture in the flesh, each landmark tells its own story (e.g The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the french to commenorate their partnership during the revolutionary war , the one world trade centre is the tallest building in New York, however the real story behind it is that it’s a replacement to the original world trade centre that consisted of two tall towers (commonly known as The Twin Towers)

Comicbook Artwork

Comicbooks artists and their work

Charlie Adlard – The Walking Dead,
Mike Mignola – Hellboy, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight
John Romita JR – Spider-Man, Kick Ass, Daredevil, Wolverine, Punisher: War zone, Eternals
Todd Mcfarlane- Spawn, Spider-man,

Why do I like it?

I like it because, eversince I was a child, I would continiously draw superheroes into my sketchbook and as ime went on, I kept getting better at and even to this day, I still continue to draw comicbook character either superhero or non superhero or even my own made up characters.

What do they mean to me?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved drawing, wheather I’d be using a pencil, a pen, charcol or a crayon I would sit down for hours drawing what I liked, It was’nt until I was about 7 years old that I discoverd a genre that captured my interest

Todd Mcfarlane

John Romita Jr

Mike Mignola

Alex Ross

Charlie Adlard

My own artwork

Props (Various Movies,Tv shows and video games)

These are movie props from various movies, tv shows and video games

I like them because of how iconic they are and how they play a big or small part in some of my favourite movies, tv shows and video games, and I’ve always wanted to make them my self.

Movies Props
Lightsaber – Star Wars Franchise
Captain Americas Sheild (Various Marvel Movies)
Hal 9000 – 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968)
Face Hugger- Alien Franchise
Billy the puppet
Freddy Krugers claw glove- A nightmare on Elm Street franchise
The flux capacitor-Back to the Future trilogy (1985-1990)
Wolverines claws- X-Men franchise (2000-2020)
Michael Myers’ Mask – Halloween franchise

Tv Show props
The Amban phase-pulse blaster- The Mandalorian (2019-)
Daredevil’s Billy Club- Daredevil (2015-2018)
Blue Sky- Breaking Bad (2008-2013)
Mr Robot Jacket- Mr Robot (2015-2019)

Videogame Props/items
Leviathan axe- God of War (2018)
Hidden Blade- Assassins Creed franchise
The Dubstep Gun- Saints row IV (2013)
The BGF- Doom Franchise
The Chainsaw paddle- Deadrising franchise
Blades of Chaos- God of War franchise

Leonardo Da Vinci (Sketches)

Leonardo Da Vinci was a renisance artist and is considered to be one of the best painters, inventors, carpenters, scientists, designer etc, of all time. he was also known for inventing early iterations of well known technology such as the helicopter, the tank, the parchute and the robot.

I’ve always had an interest in how knowlege and multicapable he was, and how he was a pioneer in medical science and technology, and even to this day, his diagrams still hold up as medically accurate.

Paintings:

Mona Lisa (1503)
The Last Supper (1498)
Vitrurian Man (1490)
Salvator Mundi (1500)

Designs for inventions:

Winged flying Machine
Tank
Parachute
Helicopter
Diving equipment
Robotic Knight

Drew Struzan (Movie Posters)

One of my choices for the The Gesamt Kunstwerk Project is specifically the movie poster art work of Drew Struzan. Before anyone could just take pictures of others or gather images from Google images and photoshop them together and post them online, most movie posters were hand painted, some of the most distinctive ones were stylized to grab the peoples attention with exotic color choices, character and background layouts and even small part of one or two scenes as a way to capture the size and scope of the movie, one of the artist who is best known for this style is Drew Struzan.

Drew Struzan is an american illustrator and painter, best known for hand painting posters for movies, he first started off by painting Album covers for music bands, such as: Alice Cooper, The Beegees and Black Sabbath, he then slowly transitioned into the movie business, but only doing small B movies that didn’t leave that much of an impression on people, that was until in 1977 when he was asked to paint the poster for the movie that kick started his popularity that movie was called ‘Star Wars’, after that he continued to paint many more poster for many famous mainstream movies, most notably George Lucas and Steven Spielburg proporties, in fact around the early days when they started making posters by photoshoping the main actor into a blank back ground, Struzan was comminisioned to paint posters for the Star Wars prequal trilogy decades after the original trilogy ended.

Known Movie posters he made:

Star Wars (The original and prequel trilogy) (1977-2005)
Indiana Jones (1981-2008)
Back to the future (Part 1,2,3) (1985-1990)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
E.T: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
The Green mile (1999)
The Thing (1982)
Harry Potter and the Philosipher’s Stone (2001)
Blade Runner (1982)
Hook (1991)

Why do I like his work?

I like how each poster gives a layout of the movie, displaying the main characters, locations and even particular scenes, also the artistic style really draws you into the movie even before you watch it, rather then posters today that just photoshop the actors in a blank back ground.

What does his work mean to me?

When I look at his work, it’s make me as well many others to belive, that he like the rest of the film crew working on the movie that he is putting in months if not years of dedication into one film, he wants to encourage others to experience the action, drama and magic of the movie, the kinds of posters he does (as well as many other people who create these kinds of posters) prove he’s seen the movies, rather then just reading a short plot summary or watching the trailer, he shows off the best of what to see in these movies, what’s worth seeing (e.g Andy Dufresne’s escape in Shawshank Redemption, Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan’s Exciting and heartbreaking duel in Star Wars Epidsode III Revenge of the Sith or the invitation to monsters, magic and Wizardry in Harry Potter.

Here’s a link to his website for his artwork, including: Album covers, comic covers, movie posters, products, unused posters, etc

http://drewstruzan.com/

The Gesamt Kunstwerk Project

For my first assignment of third year, I’ve been tasked with bringing together a collection of Objects with artistic proporties, objects that mean something to me and why, So in this project I have chosen ten objects for my fantasy collection, in terms of style, creativity, meaning and overall purpose, thus giving me ideas on how to explore it.

For my collecrtion I have picked:

Drew Struzan (Movie Poster art)
Ai Wei Wei (Lego Portraits)
Leonardo Da Vinci (Medical drawings and Invention Schematics)
Movie Props (Various Movies)
Comicbook Artwork
New York City Landmarks
Robert Welch (Knives)
Doc Marten (Shoes)
William Burges (Welsh Architect)
Macbook Computer (Apple)

There will be seperate blog posts going into full detail about why I chose them and they mean to me.

What will be my creative approch?

From picking all ten of these choices, I’ve decided that the best approch to combine two of them together, this is so they can both show off their unqiue style together.

Here are some examples:

I’d take Da vinci and all of work and painting and combine them into a Drew Struzan style poster, this would allow me to show off this paintings and inventions to show first glance on what his work and legacy was about, sort of how Struzans posters showed first glance to the people before they even saw the movies he advertsied.

I would create Da vinci style schmatics of my favourite movie props, and replicate his style of sketching, the coffee stained styled paper of his drawings, almost in a way that he built them, (e.g: A Lightsaber, The Flux Capacitior, Freddy Kruger’s Claw Glove etc.)

I would create lego brick style paintings of New York Landmarks or possibly create 3d printed pixel pieces (with painted patterns) that magnetically attach to a framed wooden board with magnets.