Artist Post #4

Giulia Balladore 

"Bianco E Nero"

Giula Balladore is a hyperrealistic vector artist who lives and works in Italy. Inspired by her father, she has self-taught herself everything she knows and started experimenting, by chance, in digital art when she bought her PC in 2002. She uses Adobe Flash to bring alive her hand-drawings of portraits that look so realistic it gives an imaginative quality to her pieces. Much of he inspiration comes from the simple beauty within women, fashion, and just what strikes her attention the most. 

"Crema Ventisette"

Balladore's works are astonishingly detailed and super realistic, showing true human nature and the simplicity of it. She will start by sketching the drawing, then it will get scanned and opened in Flash. From there, she will trace it, add color and then add many layers; she says the more layers her piece will have, the better it will turn out. Her technique allows her to manipulate and change her original sketch without losing the quality of the piece. Balladore says "My work is mainly focused on female portraits for the simple reason that for me the purest and simplest beauty stands in the look of a woman, with all of her imperfections and boundaries." This shows that she wants to capture the raw and simpleness of human nature within her work, but the added effect of vectors gives it an extra imaginative, artistic feel. 

I find her works to be breathtakingly inspiring because she takes plain sketches and turns them into these masterpieces that portray the simple beauty of the people she draws. The pure elegance that shows through her pieces makes you attracted to it and you can't seem to look away. Also, at first glance you think it is a photograph because it is so realistic and relatable. She does a superb job at getting the lighting, expression and detail just right to make it look so life-like. It is also very admiring because she has self-taught herself how to do these masterpieces, which shows that she has a great passion for the work she does. 

Project 2 Progress

Music Art

Line Art

Portrait Images

Project 1

Technology Collage 

Artist Post #3

Pascal Dombis 

"Topo"

Born in 1965, Pascal Dombis is a digital artist who uses computers and algorithms to create the images of repeating and complex designs from algorithm rules. Thus, his pieces are never planned, he just lets the algorithms go through a series of interactions. Typically, no piece would exactly be the same because the algorithms produce unpredictable results. He gained a engineering degree from Insa University but he also spent a year at Tufts University studying computer art classes, starting his usage of algorithms in his art. At first, he only used simplistic rules, like a straight line, but then he started to use digital help to create these abstract and wild works. Now, he lives and works in Paris.

"Eurasia" 

Dombis' works evoke a struggle between the orderly control of simple rules and the randomness that follows when the rules are put together. Anyway the piece ends up, it always is visually stunning and stimulating because the eye is constantly moving through out the work. In the series that "Topo" is from, Dombis focused on the idea of opening and closing geometric shapes. Continually adding more and more curves, the pieces evolved into out of control hyper structures that were integrated to look like architectural structures. 

In the series "Eurasia", Dombis wanted to convey how the internet is a major contributor to how we perceive the world, so he put together Google search image results of the words red, blue, black and white into a digital collage. The two halves compare the results from European and Asian Google pages and the collage comes together with the help of a random algorithm. The perspective changes and which side is which is determined by the viewer, but there is a clear distinction between the motives of both halves. Also, the movement of the piece helps attract the viewer and makes them stay interested. 

All in all, I really find Pascal's works to be really interesting and awesome. The idea that someone can take a simple algorithm and turn it into this complex and wild piece of art is astonishing. To make unpredictable work but to have it convey his message so successfully is inspiring because he doesn't know what the final project will look like. When I look at his work, I find myself thinking I'm lost in some crazy world trying to make sense of what is going on because he has set his work apart from others that give it such an original and unbelievable effect. Although Dombis is the one creating these pieces, the machine creates the rule but then the art work just goes on to create itself, taking on its own life per say.