Huang Zheng

Huang Zheng, a Chinese artist, paints hyper realistic portraits up close of women's faces.

Art Slant

Swooshart

The mind behind art blog 'swooshart' has paired the great sportswear giant, Nike, with classical art. Combining their famous 'swoosh' tick with works from genius artists such as Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo and many more. 

I find the tick works with some artworks more than others, for example, the image with a woman and two children walking beside her heading straight toward the viewer, who is looking slightly up toward her. The tick is powerful and reinstates Nike's brand well. Other paintings the tick sits uncomfortably in the image, most notably the paintings which do not express power or strength. For example, the painting below where the swoosh seems to be just an awkward addition to a sombre and melancholy image. 

One of the paintings I feel the tick works most strongly with

swooshart.tumblr.com

Ed Fairburn

Ed Fairburn is an illustration graduate whose art is mostly figurative. He has worked extensively in incorporating portraiture within mapwork, relating the surface of skin with the patterns created on maps, as shown below.

Ed's Facebook 

edfairburn.com 

Henry Moore's sheep sketches

Henry Moore is an artist best known for his bronze sculptures which are scattered in locations across the world, however, little people know that he was also a talented sketcher and it is his delicate sheep sketches I am going to concentrate on in particular.

Moore lived in Much Hadham, a small village in East Hertforshire, and worked in a small studio overlooking a sheep field. He spent much of his time studying the sheep in his sketchbook, the way they moved, behaved and the shape of their bodies. Moore managed to capture the sheep's faces in very intricate detail, his method was to make a small, sharp noise to grab the sheep's attention so that they would turn to look at the source of the noise for several seconds, with a long, blank stare on their faces.

Moore was fascinated with the mother-child bond of animals, larger forms protecting smaller ones, a theme which is noticeable topic of interest in much of his work. Many of his sheep sketches are of ewes protecting their lambs, one may say a large influence on his artwork. Lord Clark (Civilisation and Landscape into Art) comments that Moore expressed 'a real affection' for his sheep subjects.

Moore sculpture at Kew Gardens, notice the similarities?

His sheep sketches are very accurate and first look solid in form when standing from a distance, yet when you get closer to the imagery you start to notice his style. Zig-zags and rushed ball point pen lines dominate the drawings, thicker and more panicked scratches where there is less light and softer yet still sudden and vigorous on the brighter parts of the scene. Moore also rarely started his sketches by outlining his sheep, but started shading straight away, a risky strategy especially with the use of ball point pen but nonetheless effective.

Moore rarely outlined his sketches before shading

Buy Henry Moore's sheep sketchbook here