Casas's ballpoint pen artwork
Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas creates his large artworks using just a blue ballpoint pen. Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)
Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas creates his large artworks using just a blue ballpoint pen. Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)
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I've always liked pointilism and stippling. I have a colleague who is very good at this as well. Check out www.joellake.com
As a left-hander, I'm fascinated by this. I'd die of transdermal smudge-ink poisoning before I got halfway through something like this.
Looks amazing. Link is no good, though.
@#2
Drawing, not being confined to the left to right progression of english writing is no more likely to smudge your hand than that of a right handed person.
also, everyone should draw with ballpoint. Your hand skills will never progress faster than when working with indelible materials.
I wish his site was working
I found both links to be working...
If the link still doesn't work, try googling 'joel lake'
"...just a blue ballpoint pen" and apparently a camera too.
I have an inkjet printer that produces similar art. Oops, I guess I should call those "giclée prints" for that extra imprimatur of artsy caché. They're easy to make, too. I just feed in a digital photo, and the, um, high-tech art-making machine quickly prints out a stochastically dispersed stippled image--so beautiful!
@8
"...just a blue ballpoint pen" and apparently a camera too.
..and lights, somewhere to shoot the original photo, some people to photograph..
The point is that, besides his preparatory work, he executes his final works by hand, in pen or oil paint.
@(: What's with the hate? Jeez.
Drapeau, gratuitous snottiness works ever so much better when you use the correct word -- in this case, "cachet."
Why the rush to de-legitimize Juan Francisco Casas' art and technique? Professional illustrator George Barr does the same thing, except he uses multiple colors of ballpoint pen, and sometimes lays watercolor in on top of that. I've seen him demonstrate it in person. You can see an enlarged specimen of his technique here.
Barr and Casas aren't the only ones who've done that. There's a discussion of various ballpoint artists on Metafilter.
Quite right! The OED also corrected me, albeit belatedly. Sadly I can't find the "edit my comment" feature so I can correct my spelling.
If you don't already know it, have a look at www.biro-art.com . It's a site filled with one artists biro drawings. They're easily matched to this in quality and skill, but with a much more surreal and humourous style.
I'm blown away by both artists. I can barely control a pen to write legibly let alone come close to producing something like this. Awesome stuff.
#12 "grtts snttnss wrks vr s mch bttr whn y s th crrct wrd" Ys nd pmpss pdntr nvr fls t grt ;-)
I don't suggest that this work (and it looks like a lot of work!) is crappy or that people shouldn't enjoy it. I'm just observing that I can get a very similar result with much less effort: call it a DIY suggestion.
To my eye, a photo-realistic image like this has more probative value as evidence of an Obsessive-Compulsive spectrum disorder rather than as evidence of artistic insight or talent. And, no, I'm not a clinical psychologist with a degree in art history. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."
Drapeau, we discussed having an editing feature, but as it is we have to keep the entries and comments on separate databases in order to balance the load. If we did implement editing, it would take forever, and would probably have wonky side-effects.
Bugs, try it with a half-dry ballpoint pen and toothy paper. Lay the ink in lightly, using the same kind of motion you use when you shade with the side of your pencil lead.
If you learned your handwriting style in American public schools, drawing is easier.
Also check out an artist called Butt Johnson (dunno if that's a real name). These are some pretty fing suite ballpoint drawings.
This one is pretty insane...
This is more of an autistic skill than anything else... There is no creativity in these.
I just see it as a gimick
#19 - no creativity? does making an accurate representation of an image or still life make it an autistic skill? I'm pretty sure that this has always been seen as a classic artistic style you know. How do you mean Gimmick too?
personally I'm with Bugs @ #14, my pen control is truly terrible, I think these are beautiful and really interesting. Nice links to other artists too, fanks!
SanJames (18), thanks for that great link to Butt Johnson's work.
Drapeau (16):
But you can't get the same effect with a printer, or with a printer plus Photoshop. That just gives you overall stippling, which is neither the point, nor the effect shown.Did you look at the close-up detail from George Barr's work? Working with a ballpoint allows fine control over the degree and direction of shading. That's great for monochrome renderings of three-dimensional objects, and as Barr demonstrates, it's also a effective way to model surfaces in multiple colors. If there's a printer out there that'll add 3D shading to an illustration, let me know, because I want to buy one.
Are we judging art by its probative value now? That's rather at odds with "I just know what I like."Does your use of "obsessive-compulsive" refer to being able to accurately render an intended image, or to putting a lot of work into that rendering?
I also have to ask: have you ever dealt with an obsessive-compulsive? Are you under the impression that they're all artists?
Fontastique (19):
First, the term you're looking for is "autistic savant," which is not the same thing as garden-variety autism.Second, even the very precise autistic-savant artists, the ones with prodigious visual memories, make choices no machine can make. They leave out some details, highlight others, render some more and some less abstractly, and in general behave like artists, as opposed to very slow printing devices that use pens or pencils as print heads.
Third, there's nothing uncreative about autistics, or about autistic savant artists. As a separate issue, not all autistic savant artists work in realistic styles. Your opposition of "autistic" and "creative" is both inaccurate and offensive.
Fourth, if you're looking at Juan Francisco Casas' art and seeing no artistic choices being made in his selection and rendering of images -- that is, if you see him as just a very slow printing device that has no creative mind behind it -- why should I pay more than the polite minimum of attention to your opinions about art?
Fifth, if you actually went to John Francisco Casas' site and looked around, did you by any chance notice that he gives no evidence of being autistic, or an autistic savant?
Sixth, which is it: autistic savantry, or a gimmick? A gimmick is a cheap trick. Autism is a lifelong condition. You might make a case for one or the other, but you cannot claim it's both.
^^^^ ZINNGG!! ^^^^ :)
#18 wow, some of those are incredible!
did u heck out the "heart" one? :o
Yep #22, that "heart" one is KRaYzeE. I think it's supposed to be exploded cars from Iraq.
I also like this SETI project one.
great ballpen