Wonderfully Surreal Hand Drawn Animation

This animation short, About Face, created by Chris James in 1978 involves animal and human transformation and wonderful caricatures of many famous people. The music is by Claude Jouvin and camera work by Julian Holdaway.

In this day of CGI animation, About Face has an appeal in its rawness of line, which pulsates with life and energy, and in its direct application of media, which appears to be a combination of color pencils, ink and watercolor.  The accidental and unpredictable way the hand creates and manipulates media, following the artist's creative dictates are on full display, making the viewer aware of the drawn and painted quality of the image and by extension aware of the presence and action of the artist's hand as creator. 

This is indie animation in the pre-digital age; it is the imperfect hand drawing imperfectly conveying an idiosyncrasy that expresses a dreamlike quality, conjuring ethereal and hallucinatory images in thin air.  The wild and violent metamorphosis of human and animal figures and transitions from scene to scene gives me the impression of what might happen if Salvador Dali and Afred Hitchcock were to collaborate, creating something intensely psychological, disquieting and phantasmagoric. In fact, Dali and Hitchcock have collaborated once in the movie Spellbound (1945). Beyond the obvious similarity of the musical treatment in Spellbound, About Face seems to tap into the visual language and mood from Spellbound’s dream sequence and another Hitchcock movie, Vertigo.  The dream sequence in Vertigo also uses hallucinatory transformations and flashing colors to give the alarming impression of a nightmare.

 About Face is animation at its best revealing the movement of the imagination with no limits, where anything is possible, the witty comedic shift to the surprising, to the absurd, to the threatening and to the terrifying".

Spellbound (1945)




Vertigo (1958)




Because I am discussing surrealism and the cinema and made reference to Dali, it would be fitting to present his 1929 surrealist classic. A short movie he collaborated on with Luis Bunuel called Un Chien Andalou. They created the film under the principle that " no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.

The Modernist Grid

The grid is a ubiquitous sign of modernity. It is a schematic that is a universe tool in organizing visual information although it is more associated with modern art and architecture, science and technology, and modern cities.

The grid can mirror the vertical and horizontal edges of a page, canvas or screen.  It emphasizes flatness, straightness, and the materiality of its support. It can function as an organizing structure as in the case of Chuck Closes painting Emma, or as form itself as in the case of Mondrian's and Martin's paintings.

 Emma, Woodcut print 2002  Chuck Close

Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow, Piet Mondrian

On A Clear Day, 1973, Agnes Martin

As an organizing tool it guides the disposition of elements within the two-dimensional plane. It can function as an invisible or visible structure. It activates the entire space into a structured field. It is a rationale for why and how parts are placed within the space.

Tokyo Dolores Japanese Dance, Performance Art

Tokyo Dolores is a Japanese performance art project that brings together acrobatics, anime, fantasy and folklore, Japanese pop and subcultures, street fashion and elaborate costumes, and pole dancing. Tokyo Dolores collaborates with artist, costume designers, videographers, and other creative people during the production of their live performances. They explore the deep and complex spirituality of Japanese girls.

Experimental Japanese Animator Yoji Kuri

Yoji Kuri, born in Japan in 1928, is a cartoonist and independent filmmaker who gave birth to a modern-styled, independently made, adult-aimed animation in early 1960 Japan.  He is considered part of the first wave of experimental animators. His work involves dark comedy using farce and morbid humor. He works in a multitude of styles, but generally his animations are surreal, erotic, witty and strangely disturbing.

Love-Ai (1963)



Aos (1964)



The Room

http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/the_first_wave_of_independent_animators_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yōji_Kuri

Basic Compositional Principles

Understanding compositional principles are important as a starting point to becoming a more informed viewer. Artists use, bend and break these principles  as necessary in conveying their message and creating visual excitement. For the viewer when you know the underlying principles behind how a composition is organized, your appreciation and understanding of the work is increased. Compositional structure is not purely an aesthetic issue; the visual order or structural logic of a work of art or design conveys  meaning, and an artist or designer tries to correlate that meaning with his or her content and intention whether consciously or intuitively.

Studio update

This painting like most of my paintings go through many revisions. My painting are discovered  during the making process, so that the end is always a surprise to me where I end up.  I getting the feeling this painting is getting close to resolution.

This is a new painting I have just begun. It is based on the drawing below. I am experimenting with a more aggressively painterly approach.  I am trying to emphasize the materiality of paint and its application, the presence of surface  and greater abstract tension between image and pictorial elements.

A small drawing in pencil.

Yes I have changed this one again, now it has turned into a night painting.

I thought the painting was finished, but then I decided to change it. So the journey continues. Change one thing, then every thing else has to adjust. The previous state is below.

I like how it was, but I had to change it nevertheless, sometime I guess you have to be willing to make a bad painting to discover something new and unforeseen.

This one is near completion.

This one is almost done, I am sure of it.