Inside the Sketchbook

Crate Man Craze

The artist or artists who created Lego-looking Crate Man are unknown, but they have been appearing around the world since 2006. Most of the time they are seen in various cities in Australia, but some Crate Men have made appearances in South Africa. He has been found climbing walls, sitting on balconies, and even under trees with signs that read "It's been whey too long! It's crate to be back. Crateman."

During the World Cup, Coca Cola installed its own 54 foot Crate Man, made of 2,500 Coke bottle crates, at Cape town at an harbor (photograph on the right).

CrateMen

Cate Parr

Cate Parr is a fashion Illustrator from England who now lives in California. She uses watercolor to "capture the ethereal, fleeting and vulnerable qualities of fashion imagery" (www.thecoolhunter.net). The use of darker hues mixed with softer colors forces the viewers to pause and study the piece in more depth. Her ability to grab attention with a few brushstrokes makes her a valuable artist in the fashion industry. Some of her clients include Material Girl Cosmetics and Dickies and Dickies Girl.

Cate Parr

Liam Brazier

Liam Brazier is a thirty year old UK animator and illustrator who has been taking superheroes and using angular shapes to recreate them. Instead of using the vector tools in Adobe Illustrator, he uses the polygonal tool in Photoshop then fills them in with color. His artwork displayed at Apple, Samsung, the Museum of London, and several other sites.

Liam Brazier

Makoto Tojiki

Makoto Tojiki is a Japanese artist and designer who experiments with light as his medium. He takes the images he manipulates from light and shadow and from jewelry that reflects light such as diamonds. Once of his clients is Hermes. For his "No Shadow" exhibit, he uses small LED lights hanging from threads.

Makoto Tojiki

Guy Laramee

Guy Laramee is a thirty year old Canadian sculptor, stage writer, director, painter, writer, and composer. He recycles several old, encyclopedias placed together and carves the surfaces with drills to create landscapes. His works represents the declining of human culture. He chooses old books based on the appearance of the book cover color. He also believes that knowledge is "gained by erosion, not accumulation."

"Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are."

Guy Laramee

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter is an English author and illustrator. Like the paintings and sketches of the Peter Rabbit above, her artwork focused mainly on mice, rabbits, kittens, and other small animals. To make the subjects unique, she placed them in settings British clothing (Peter's blue jacket) and country landscape. Potter's artwork stands out through her curvilinear use of line and soft color scheme. I enjoy the whimsical effect the two elements create.

Beatrix Potter

More from Robson!

Aurora Robson

26'x26'x30", plastic debris (PET), rivets, tinted polycrylic, mica powder

Aurora Robson, a Canadian artist, is known for her beautiful pieces of environmentally friendly artwork created with everything from extra packaging material to plastic waste. Aurora grew up in Maui, Hawaii which gave her a great appreciation for nature. She currently lives in New York and has taught photography, welding, and sculpture at Colombia. The above piece, Oleum, uses the element of color and shape. The color selection is monochromatic and the farther away from the center the shapes reach, the more the color fades. The shapes are created from the recycled plastic available, making each part unique. I enjoy how Robson used a happy color scheme to give the plastic a new life.

Aurora Robson

Edgar Degas

Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, 1881, 38 inches, wax then bronze, National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

The Dance Class (La Classe de Danse),1873–1876, oil on canvas

Edgar Degas is A French painter, sculptor, and draftsman and is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism (ordinary subject matter, small brush strokes, movement). His subject specialty is dance. More than half of his artwork is of dancers, specifically ballerinas. His Little Dancer of Fourteen Years is his most well known pieces. It was originally cast in wax and then into bronze. The sculpture has real hair and the only part not covered in wax was a hair ribbon given to him by Marie van Goethem and the tutu. Since the bronze gave the stature an unnatural color tone, many critics thought it ugly. The texture of the statue makes it lifelike while the value (darkness from metal) takes away from its life likeness at the same time. The direction of the dancer's pose creates balance.

The Little Dancer

More Mini Worlds

The Pothole Gardener

Moss Place East London, doll chair and knitting basket, moss, and fertilizer

Steve Wheen is a a guerrilla gardener. His medium of choice is nature and doll house props, which he transports into London's many potholes along quiet streets. After he is satisfied with his work, he photographs it and then removes the props. Besides just wanting to make people smile and create art, he uses his little worlds to show the dilapidated state of England's roads. He called it "a creative outlet for something that annoys[him]." His creations utilize the element of scale due to the size of potholes. Also, he uses the element of color to cause his artwork to stand out and grab the attention of those passing by. I chose this artist because of his odd choice of placement for his artwork.

Pothole Gardener

Leonid Afremov

Loneliness of Autumn, oil paint, palette knife, 30"x40"

Rain Princess 2

The Russian-Israeli impressionistic artist, Leonid Afremov, is recognized for his brightly colored oil paintings he creates using a palette knife in the place of regular paint brushes. Due to his unique and highly recognizable style, that took him 10 years to gain his current skill level, he does not even need to sign any of his artwork. Afremov's paintings rely heavily on color to create to distinguish the subject matter from the lighting effects. I chose this card because I was impressed by how Afremov created beautiful lighting effects without having all the other colors diluting the effects out.

Artwork of Leonid Afremov