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.
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.
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)
During one of my Tuesday seminar meetings, we were all tasked with partaking in a physical and mental exercise for one week, as a way of finding more creative outputs and see if we develop any new healthy habits, these include a cold shower, daily dancing, daily exercise, reading for an hour, going to bed early etc.
Tuesday 27th October
I started off with five minutes of conscious breathing by slowly breathing in through my nose amnd out my mouth, next I did a little dance excercise and mae sure I was completly highdrayted with water, my last exercises for the day were drawing, reading a book for an hour and taking a picture of me reading the book.
My drawing was of Moon Knight (Marvel Superhero)
The book I read was Stepthen King’s The Shinning (1977).
Wednesday 28th October
I started off today by doing five minutes of conscious breathing, then I did 15 minutes of stretching, including streching my arms and legs, doing sit ups, squats etc. Later in the afternoon I did a drawing of Michael Myers from Halloween.
Thursday 29th October
At 9 AM, I started off the day by walking into university campus, it took me 43 minutes, during the early afternoon I did a small drawing of an hour glass in my notebook.
Friday 30th October
The first thing I did was do 15 minutes of morning stretches followed by five minutes of conscious breathing, in the late afternoon, I went for a quick 20 minute walk both there and back, during the late evening I sat down drew a small drawing of me as a Kestral in my notebook.
Saturday, 31st October
I started off my morning as usual doing 15 minutes of stretching and five minutes of conscious breathing, by the late afternoon I sat down and did a drawing of Blade from Marvel Comics.
Sunday 1st November
In the morning I started off my 15 minutes of stretching and five minutes of conscious breathing , during the early afternoon, I sat down and drew a picture of Stan Smith from American Dad and finally from the late afternoon to the evening I went on a long walk for 42 minutes.
Monday 2nd November
I started off by having a 40 minute walk both there and back, next I proceeded by doing five minutes of conscious breathing, during the evening I did a drawing of Homelander from ‘The Boys’
Conclusion
Through out this entire week of exercise I did manag to achive most of the daily excercises including the walking, breathing, drawing and occasional stretching, I did miss some of the other ones such as taking a cold shower, limiting my time on social media, cooking a new recipe and going to bed early one night (staying up doing worl, mostly)
However when not doing my work or running errands, this exercise did give me differnet aims on what to do on a daily basis, my top favourites were the walking and the drawing. Even though I was mainly focusing on my main project through out the past week these exercise did give me something to do when I have about an hour or two to myself, in future, if I were to create an exercise routine to suit my own needs,(however I would still do the daily walks and drawings since those are some of my favourite activites) mine would include limiting myself to what I eat, making sure I get a perfect balance of in door uni work and fresh air or set various timers (preferably 1 hour) for whenever I work, read, relax or do chores (even make a game of it, like see how much I can get done in an hour, then try to break that record). These excercises could benifit in healthy thought process and effiency without being too difficult or demanding and would give me the ability to work at a better pace.
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-)
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.
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
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.
Ewan's Art Blog 