exploding dog
 

As I am sure many of you already know, Sam Brown draws pictures. Send him a title, and if he likes it, he'll draw pictures from those titles. And what he draws deserves to be hanging in a museum.

Seriously, if you have not seen Sam's artwork before, you owe it to yourslef to go to his site, and browse through what he's done.

exploding dog

Errr...yeah. Can he actually draw a horse that looks like a horse?

Don't be fooled by the simplistic style, some of his stuff is amazingly good and profound.

He has such precise control over the lines themselves. Despite the extremely simplistic nature of his 'stick-men', you can often tell exactly the mood they have. How he can convey so much with so little is mind blowing.

Yeah - just because it is stick men, there is definable small hints that this guy is a rockin' artist. Don't you notice the foreshortening? Don't you see the excellent perspective? Dood, it's all there.

He has style and buckets of imagination - heck he's even nice enough to give people a chance to add their own idea's to his drawings in the form of a title - I'm guessing if forced to this guy could draw anything, if you think realisim or still life is the only proof of good art. I am also guessing he could probably out draw me anyday.

I don't really know what to make of him? Does his handling of perspective automatically make him a great artist? Or does he still just draw stick figures? Still, some of them are kind of profound and complex, in a squiggly sort of way. I wish he would expand his drawings to include more than stickmen. I think he would rock.

If drawing ability (or photorealistic portrayal) makes a great artist, then the Pompidou Center, MoMA, and Guggenheim would be sorely lacking. Have you seen some of the works of Vasily Kandinsky? He's an excellent artist, and quite a few of his paintings look like this.

In the end, it has more to do with what your audience gets out of it. I've seen two vacuum cleaners stacked on top of one another in the MoMA. Love or hate it, it's still art.

I think the stickman style is great. It isn't about doing something with deep detail, its about doing something that just conveys an idea as simply and truthfully as he can. I think his art would lose something if he moved away from stick figures and started to draw more "human" characters.

I sent him in a title long ago. I've forgotten what the title was, but I remember that I sent it to him. Now I tell myself that the "Travelling without moving" picture is the title that I sent in. I don't know if its true, but it comforts me.

Nope, he can't really draw in still life. There's an interview of him somewhere. He said that he drew stickman in college to relieve stress from school. So it hinted that he didn't have professional training. Although some people don't need training to draw really realistic paintings, those guys tend to be geniuses that come along once in a few generations(that's what I believe). I'd post the link were it not for the fact that I don't know how to. I guess I don't really respect people who call themselves "artists" and who don't know how to portray things as they are seen.

Well knock me down with a feather - I guess the points you guys came up with are good ones. I guess I should have explained myself better ^^;

I meant to say (if not, then I do now), that people who do have good skill with perspective and so on - tend to be able to then change it to suit their style, just because they can doesn't mean they are then forever bound to draw in a way that is concidered correct.

Hrem - right-o better be quite or this may turn into a debate, which in itself isn't bad, but it would be in the wrong board :P

Artists are creators, not cameras. If art was confined to portraying things only as they are seen, our museums would be filled to the brim with some very dull portraits.

Even the great artists of times past realized that photorealistic depictions were not necessary to make a worthy piece. Take a look at these two paintings by Parmigianino and J. A. D. Ingres. Clearly, Parmigianino knew how to portray things are they are seen- look at the female figures to the left of the seated Madonna- but chose not to do so. One quick glance at the overly elongated neck, torso, and limbs of the Madonna, and this is made quite apparent. The case is largely the same with Ingres's 'Large Odalisque'- an uneccessary amount of vertebrae, elongated back, the 'boneless' look of the arm, etc. This should tell you something about art and artists right away: these two clearly possessed the ability to create realistic portraits, but chose not to utilize it. Art can go beyond what the eye sees.

Fast forward to impressionism, post impressionism, pointillism, cubism and the works of Monet, Cezanne, Seurat, Braques and Picasso and you see artists further distancing themselves from painting only what is seen.

Skill and ability may separate a "great" artist from a "so-so" artist, but it doesn't dictate "artists" and "non-artists." There are so many components of art that go beyond sheer mechanical ability- imagination and creativity among them. Having the ability / not having the ability / having the ability but not using the ability / not having the ability and not needing the ability ... It's all the same, because what matters is your creation as a whole, not strictly your drawing ability.

In the end, you're entitled to believe what you wish, but I have to express that I think you're severely limiting your concept of art. You don't have to like it, (there are tons of works that I utterly despise), but it doesn't seem fair to classify between art and non-art, artist and non-artist by virtue of "how close this person can come to producing a photograph."