Tag Archives: Julian Beever

Portrait drawing of Bob Dylan, The Never Ending Tour

November 15, 2011 gareth

Portrait drawing of Bob Dylan another cool drawing of his Bobness ( The never ending tour) to add to my collection. Like most things I do, there has to be a reason.

Portrait drawing, why Bob Dylan?

Let me tell you a story about a man who started work at 14 years of age, he was employed to work on the building of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, the United Kingdom. This building was officially started in 1904 and ended in1978 after this man retired. This man worked his whole life in the same job, in the same place, for 51 years at least. I can’t remember his name so I can’t find an image to do a portrait drawing of him but I can find Bob Dylan.

His Bobness (Bob Dylan) has been doing this also. He was about 20 years old when he hit the New York music scene in 1961 and now 70, a grand total of 50+ years. If you take into account he was forming bands when he was in school, at a time when young people left at 14 or 15 years of age, then it might be 55 or more years.

His Bobness is still at this time, (2011) performing a stage performance on a regular basis and has been entertaining for the past 50+ years. Is that a good enough reason, to do a portrait drawing of Bob Dylan?

Regardless of any cash they did or didn’t make doing their life’s work, it must be seen as an achievement of the highest order, 50+ years doing the same job and being successful at it, is an outstanding achievement.

Bob Dylan has been on a never ending tour all his life having taken a little time off, now and then with sickness, as happens to us all. He tells us that he is just a song and dance man, nothing more, nothing less. One who just sings songs and is not prepared to wear anybody else’s crown. An entertainer, just like Arthur Lee or Julian Beever, artists all of them, so I did this portrait drawing, titled, The Never Ending Tour. Surely it was a worthy cause and good enough reason to do it?

The Never Ending Tour.

The first thought when doing this portrait drawing or perhaps even before I did the drawing, was I did not want to just copy a picture of Bob. That would just be a copy of someone else’s portrait and would not say very much more about the man or his life.

I spent a while doing some quick portrait drawing of Bob trying to find some ideas and get a feel for the features of his face. This is something I often do when portrait drawing as do lots of other artists. I also looked at hundreds of pictures of the man on line, in magazines and books.

Luckily many of my friends are fans of him so there is an abundance of material around me. These people are also like encyclopedias on the man, so I could find out lots of information about him. This helped me build up and hone in on this knowledge base to inform my thinking.

This also gave me plenty of opportunity to discus these ideas and get some feed back from real human beings. As well as what was going on inside my own head.

If you don’t put anything into the box then you are not going to get anything out of it, I always think.

Bob Dylan like many Americans during the 60s had idolized, Woody Guthrie, an American singer, songwriter and folk musician. Woody it seems was a man with a wonder lust, a traveling man, who jumped trains and lived as best he could, at times singing for a nickel or a dime. Bob Dylan perhaps because of the influence of his idol was much the same and spent some of his time with Woody, after seeking him out in New York during the last years of Woody’s life.

During both Wood’y and Bob’s time trains where a big and important part of a traveling man’s life. For both men there would have been a great deal of time spent around trains and stations. The rail road had to be a strong feature and influence in Dylan’s early life as well as well as woody’s. The never ending tour and the railways went hand in hand so had to be a feature in any Bob Dylan portrait drawing and also having a great significance towards it being a journey.

Success is a journey of many events.

The graphite pencil portrait drawing of Bob Dylan below was my first attempt at drawing him. I used graphite pencils, mostly a 2b and 4b. This was only a quick drawing but I do think I captured something of the man as he is nowadays in this drawing. Much older than the young man moving to New York in 1961.

The more you draw a persons face, the more you learn about it, so it is important to do this when trying to create something original from photographic information. Doing this also helps to find ideas for new concepts and ways of stating something in your drawing, as often they suggest ideas.

All of this together is more than good reason to do some preliminary drawing and also having a wish of creating something original it is necessary for feeding your imagination I think.

I found an image on line of Bob not looking like Bob at all, wearing a woolly hat and a jogging suit out for a jog. It was not your usual image so I had to have a go at drawing it just because of this reason and I was looking for something original. The drawing you will find below is another quick drawing with a black Sharpie marker pen.

Notice how I have put the suggestion of other images into the drawing as well, trying out ideas and trying to generate something new from the other drawing by looking for a way of combining them.

The image below was mostly drawn with maker pens, using different grey scale tones, I did the out line sketch with graphite pencil. I tried combining another image of a railway line into the drawing because I was trying ways of portraying something different to make the drawing original. The railway line idea became a good idea when I thought about it after because it would be a significant part of the never ending tour.

Now I had something to work with I created a photographic type image by combining different images together using a free photo editing software called GIMP Shop, this is the image below.

When I am working on idea I like to put them together in one place so I can see them all together and then keep looking at them looking for further ideas.

From looking at all these ideas together I came up with the idea that I could use the blacked out side of the face to bring something else into the image and after looking at it for a while I thought that I could make an image of somebody sitting down on a stool playing the guitar. This then instigated me doing a quick sketch of what it might look like and can be seen in the drawing below.

I now had the idea I was looking for, a story of the never ending tour, a younger Bob Dylan and older version, with a railway line between both so I then made the portrait drawing you can see below by taking bits from different photographs, combining them into something completely new.

Bob Dylan, never ending tour graphote drawing of the portrait idea. — A graphite pencil portrait drawing of Bob Dylan, the never ending tour, size A3, 16″ x 11-6/5″.

Bob Dylan portrait drawing, The never ending tour, 2011.

New York City Musical Landscape in 1961. — This image is another idea made from thousands of guitar picks manipulated in GIMP photo editing software. It is a portrait of the New York City Musical Landscape in 1961 in which the young Bob made one of his first stops on the Never Ending Tour.

The video below was another experiment captured with a camera and illustrated with black Indian ink, a brush and some water.

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Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk art.

May 22, 2011 gareth 7 Comments

Julian Beever sidewalk art and pavement chalk artist is now very well known on line. Over the past 6 or 7 years he has grown to become a very popular figure of discussion, which is because of his excellent 3d drawings having gained him widespread publicity, people sure like unusual subjects to discuss don’t they? In his work he creates the most amazing side-walk art by using anamorphic perspectives.

It could be said that he is an expert in the creation of dynamic optical illusions, with much experience in focal plane perspectives, this alone is to be admired, if not for any other reason than using anamorphic perspective and dynamic perspective to project himself across the world. Most of his work is celebrated by both people & businesses alike, having donated to this effort, allowing the opportunity for Julian’s work to exist. Once the work is completed it is abandoned, thus making it into what is called ephemeral art, an art form that has a short life span, something that eventually disappears like tears in rain.

Julian Beever Sidewalk art.

In his book (Pavement Chalk Artist) he proclaims himself to be an entertainer, a showman, who started as a juggler and become a community activist, celebrated on a global scale as well as also being a very competent draughtsperson. Maybe he has a BA degree acquired at Leeds Polytechnic under his belt but after that he certainly went his own way and set his mark on the world populace.

All I can say about him really, is street art.

Because Julian Beever sidewalk art is unusual it has drawn attention to him from people all over the world but he also uses the same tools as the media networks that publicize the creations and portray the work. Works that can only be seen at their best through the eye of a camera lens, the same camera lens that was used to draw them. Coincidence or not these are the same visual tools that are used in the media networks and the social media networks that are enjoying a bonanza online at the present, photos say so much and are so easy to share. Grab attention for yourself by creating unusual art, 3d drawings that you can give to the news and wider media to be shared using the same tools everybody uses, coincidence or not, it works.

Julian Beever sidewalk art, 3d paintings don’t seem that difficult when you know the methods used to create them so please let me tell you how.

If you look at a pole or post that stands upright coming up from out of the ground, it will look like it is standing upright, it needn’t be a pole or a post, it can be anything, I use a post for explanation because it is a simple shape to use as an example.

Take a look at it from about 6 meters or 12 feet away, you will easily see the image as an item standing upright. You will see the post with all the differing angles that your brain will tell you is a post standing in an upright position from the ground. If you then draw a picture from the exact position you are standing in or take a picture from that position with a camera, it’ll look like it is a post standing in an upright position. If you then place that drawing, image or photo, flat on the ground it’ll look like a picture lying on the floor but it will never have the look of a post that is standing upright. It will not matter how big or small it is, not even if as large as the post itself, it’ll never really look like an upright post. If you move further back away from where it is lying on the floor, it’ll be increasingly difficult for you to identify what it is, as the angle which you’re looking at will make it more and more obscure. Julian Beever correctly refers to this angel as a viewing plane.

This is why it’ll not work.

When looking at 3D objects in reality our eyes see many different angles which are related to size, shape and distance, because you’ve 2 eyes, they see little differences and your brain informs you when the objects are 3-dimensional by understanding the meaning of all these different angels, it tells you that what you are seeing is 3 dimensional and has more than 1 side, which is what happens for you to see in 3D.

ulian Beever sidewalk art, chalk art, Viewing Plain Anamorphic Perspective — A diagram showing the Julian Beever, Sidewalk Art Viewing Plain, Anamorphic Perspective.

An example of this phenomenon can be seen in Julian Beever sidewalk art below, described as the swimming pool, in the High Street.

Julian Beever sidewalk art, Swimming Pool on the high street. — Julian Beever sidewalk art, Swimming Pool on the high street an example of anamorphic perspective.

Below is the same Julian Beever sidewalk art example of a pool drawn on another high street from an opposite viewing position to show how these images are elongated in order to make up for the distance they are being viewed at and giving the illusion of them being closer than they actually are.

This helps the Julian Beever sidewalk art to achieve the illusion below by tricking the eye into thinking the focal length is shorter also enabling Julian to give the impression of a very small man on the top of a very large bottle.

Julian Beever, 3d drawings a beer bottle. — Julian Beever, 3d drawings, a beer bottle drawn on a sidewalk in Scotland UK

Julian Beever 3D Beer Bottle chalk drawing. — Julian Beever 3D Beer Bottle chalk drawing that is the same as the one above it with slight changes.

In the Julian Beever sidewalk art pictures above, I’ve highlighted the lines where the paving slabs join, so you are able to see more clearly that the top part of the bottle is much bigger than it should be in relation to the bottom to create the illusion of it being closer.See how the base of the bottle in highlighted section 2 is just a little bit less than the width of one paving slab but the middle section just before the neck begins to taper in, highlighted section 1 is almost 2 slabs wide and should help you to understand that the drawing is being distorted in order to help make up for the distance it is at.

The distance is best seen by looking at the Julian Beever sidewalk art example aboveto see how small he is when compared with the girl and looking at the gradual reduction of the size of the tiles, they can also be used to help to measure out and map the construction of your drawing like using a grid. The top part of the drawing looks like it is about two tile’s wide and much larger than the base of the bottle in the drawing.

Trying to understand how Julian Beever sidewalk art works.

When doing a drawing of a post so that it gives the impression of it standing upright, it would have to be elongated so as to confuse your eyes and brain into thinking it was closer to you than it actually is. It would also have to be much wider at the top to compensate for the distance and the further away it is the wider it would have to be because something further away gets smaller, meaning you will need to make adjustments to it in order to be able to compensate for the distance. Doing this in the drawing will give the illusion of it being closer than it is in reality. The Julian Beever sidewalk art incorporates these measures into the drawings to make them more believable and 3D looking.

A bit like the picture below, where the horizontal drawing is much larger at the other end from the base because it is farther away so it is drawn bigger making it look like it is closer.

Julian Beever sidewalk art.

Post Drawing For Julian Beever Example to show distortion. — An example of how a post would need to be distorted so as to seem like it was standing upright.

Below is yet another example showing Julian Beever sidewalk art that shows the image as being elongated so that it will work from the distance in which it is being viewed.

The planet with Julian Beever standing on top. — The planet with Julian Beever standing on top, sidewalk art drawn in the same place as the beer bottle above.

Chalk art drawing showing elongation for creating anamorphic perspective. — The planet side view, chalk art drawing showing how it has been elongated to create the anamorphic perspective.

The image above of the world picture shows another example of stretching the drawing and how the drawn image becomes much bigger as a means of compensating for distance Please take a look at the Julian Beever sidewalk art video below.

Below, I’m told this is a different type of drawing that has been attributed as being more Julian Beever, sidewalk art in the form of being a more traditional mural on a wall, it’d not surprise me as it is somewhat in a similar style that is reminiscent of other drawings he has composed. If this is not one of his drawings then it would be safe to assume that there has been some influence from Julian Beever sidewalk art in this work and I’d be very surprised to find it hasn’t. I like it as it’s very dynamic and impressive.

Mural On Wall, Optical illusion,TUNNELVISION by artist, Blue Sky. — Mural On Wall Optical illusion unknown artist perhaps Julian Beever?

It turns out that the above image was not by Julian Beveer and may have even been an insperation to him and not the other way round because this work was unveiled in 1975

It is fifty foot by seventy five foot mural titled TUNNELVISION by artist, Blue Sky.

More information and work by the artist can be found here at this link.

Blue Sky Gallery The online art gallery for Columbia, South Carolina’s premier artist, Blue Sky.

Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk art can be seen in his book (Pavement Chalk Artist) 2010 is full of wonderful insights about his work giving you a small insight into the mind of the artist himself and how he created this popular street art, I bought mine from here and it was worth every penny better than any ebook online.

Image of a lighter standing upright. — Image of a lighter standing upright

The challenge is to draw this lighter as an Anamorphic Perspective and reveal how it is done for those who are interested in finding out.

I took the lighter image and inserted a grid over the top to use as a reference grid for doing the drawing, I also want to show what the Anamorphic Perspective Grid actually looks like.

Lighter standing upright with grid over the top. — Lighter standing in upright position with reference grid over the top.

My camera was set up so I could draw the grid by using a camera as a viewer so as to be more able to draw the grid by using the viewing window of the camera as a guide. This is the same position and angle that the original lighter photograph was taken at.

Image showing the camera angle in relation to the paper drawing area.

In the image below you can see both the grid that has been drawn onto the A1 sheet of cartridge paper and the image as seen through the camera lens. It shows the difference between the real drawing on the paper and the image being viewed through the lens and you can see that the image in the camera viewer is now symmetrical. This now enables me to copy the image from the lighter standing in upright position with reference grid over the top as above.

Anamorphic Perspective through the camara lens showing the grid. — Anamorphic Perspective grid as seen through the camera lens.

The image below shows what the Anamorphic Perspective Drawing Grid looks like when viewed directly from the front and looks like a normal perspective drawing grid that would perhaps be used for drawing a building looking down from the top.

Anamorphic Perspective Grid. — Anamorphic Perspective Grid drawing shown directly from the front.

This is my quick drawing of the lighter when viewed from the correct position with the camera as you can see it worked and the lighter actually looks like it is standing upright.

Anamorphic Perspective Grid And Lighter Drawing — Anamorphic Perspective photographed from the correct photographic angle and position.

Anamorphic Perspective Through Camera Lens Showing Lighter And Grid Showing Visual Plane. — Anamorphic perspective of the lighter drawing through the camera lens, this is showing the lighter and perspective grid at the correct viewing plane.

When you look at the image below it helps to get a look at it in its natural state as a flat drawing on a flat surface and help to get an understanding of how the Anamorphic Perspective works.

Anamorphic Perspective Grid Drawing Not Sighted with Camera Correctly. — Anamorphic Perspective lying on drawing table to showing its two dimensional attributes

Below is the drawing completely in its natural viewing state as it can be seen directly from the front and now you can see how distorted it actually is. It is now quite easy to draw an Anamorphic Perspective grid because it is in actual fact a normal perspective drawing grid being looked at from upside down.

Anamorphic Perspective lighter drawing viewed from the front. — Anamorphic Perspective lighter drawing viewed directly from the front showing its normal viewing state as it would be viewed when not looking at the correct angle. From Above

Anamorphic Perspective lighter Drawing Upside Down From Above — The same Anamorphic drawing from above but turned upside down to show it as looking like any normal perspective drawing.

Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk artist his work can be seen in this book (Pavement Chalk Artist) 2010 it is a full colour book of some of his work giving some wonderful insights about how he came to create this popular street art. I enjoyed reading this book and gaining the small insights into the thinking of the artist himself, it was bought from Amazon and it was worth every penny better than any ebook down loaded from off line, I prefer the real thing.

Click the image below to get a price on Amazon.

Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk artist.

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Julian Beever 3d paintings.

July 4, 2009 gareth 13 Comments

Julian Beever 3d paintings are great but I would also like to give mention to, Kurt Wenner, Edgar Müller, who are three other artists, known for doing, modern anamorphic, perspective, 3d paintings, 3d street art and these three artists, give us some proof, that there is more to looking, than just pointing your eyes, in the direction of an object.

Everybody and the dog will tell you, drawing is about looking and do you know what, all of them are right but do you want to know something else, very few of them actually explain what they mean, do they?

How important is it to understand, some basic principles about looking, when trying to understand Julian Beever 3d paintings better?

I don’t know about you but I see so much, I cannot possibly take it all in, we live in a very visually informative world, 80% of all the information we receive, is visual any way. So we are literally, being bombarded with it, saturated with it, we even see things in our sleep or at least, we think we do.

But we actually see very little because it doesn’t register, we are not really looking, we are just seeing, browsing you might say but if you are going to learn to draw, then you need to look, with reason.

Here are some obvious points, that weren’t so obvious, to me once upon a time; I used to lie on the bed, as a kid and draw, but no matter how hard I tried, my pictures never looked right.

When I used to draw at the kitchen table, they always turned out, much better and it was because of the angel I was drawing at, if you try to draw at an angle, lying down, then you will usually end up with, a distorted image. If you only look at this image, from the angle at which it was drawn, it will look more accurate, than if you hold it up squarely in front of your eyes, to view.

This information is very useful, when you look at the fantastic work, created by chalk sidewalk artist’s, Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these are modern day artist’s, doing chalk, 3d pavement art, that completely turns, this whole problem to an advantage, not only do they make this, a unique selling point but they also, make it their trade mark.
Before Julian Beever, 3d paintings, there was Andrea Pozzo.

There is a name for this type of art, it is called, anamorphic perspective and the earliest examples of this are, by Leonardo Da Vinci and Andrea Pozzo.

Some examples of this early work, can be seen in Andrea Pozzo’s work, on the ceilings of the Jesuit, St Ignatius’ Church, Rome, 1685 – 1694, this masterpiece, is a fabulous example, of illusory perspectives and the dome being of particular importance.

Sant Ignazio ceiling.

Sant' Ignazio wikipedia image — Image taken from Wikipedia as example please click image to see full size.

Sant Ignazio ceiling further away.

Sant_ignazio_ceiling wikipedia — Image taken from Wikimedia as an example of this work please click image for bigger full size version.

The dome is not real either and from a certain point, marked with a brass plate, on the floor, you find it very difficult, to see that it isn’t.

Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these guys do this, on the street and also create, fabulous examples of illusory perspectives, so the question for me, is how they do these illusions.

Julian Beever, Edgar Müller and Kurt Wenner.

Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Kurt Wenner, 3d paintings.

Edgar Müller, 3d paintings.

Edgar Müller uses the computer, to digitally render the work, concepts, ideas, if you can use computer photo editing software, then this is the way to go.

Looking at the way Edgar constructs his drawings, shows that he uses, what looks like masking tape, to get parts of his street paintings accurate, it also looks like he takes an approach, similar to that used in Julian Beever’s, 3d paintings.

Here are just a couple of ideas, I tried, after looking at work done by these other guys but mostly I used Edgar Müller, for inspiration and I was pleasantly surprised.

Image done with photo editing software to give an example of Edgar Muller type theme. — Image done with photo editing software, to give an example of an Edgar Muller, type theme.

Another image done with photo editing software to give an example of Edgar Muller, Jillian Beaver , Kurt Wenner 3d street art type illusions. — Another image, done with photo editing software, to give an example of Edgar Muller, Jillian Beaver , Kurt Wenner, 3d street art, type illusions.

Julian Beever explains, that he is not a mathematician and has no mathematical skills to speak of; he says that he uses, the good old grid method, in order to construct his drawings. He also uses, a camera on a tripod as a viewer, which enables him to use the fixed position of the camera, to always be able to identify, the exact position, to view the street painting accurately.

A statement made by Kurt Wenner, that explains, how he approaches his work, “Artistic geometry was the most fascinating subject” this could be mathematics, in another name, exactly the opposite to Julian Beever.

If I was going to create the illusion above, then I would do it like this, first of all I would do a scaled painting, on paper of the above image, that would be four times bigger, than the original image, which is A4, so my preparation painting would be A2 in size.

This will give me a greater understanding, of how to construct the drawing and mix the colors, it will give me a feeling for the picture, plus it is a desirable image, in it’s own right. This would also give me two images, to work from and a more informed understanding of what, I would be attempting to create.

I would find the farthest point, from my camera tripod, yes I would use a camera because after carrying out some experiments, I found it to be very helpful for viewing, not just this type of work either, so thanks to Julian Beever.

I also realized that these illusions, don’t have the same impact to the naked eye and after reading extensively, about these artists, I find that they also hint at this.

From the farthest point, I would run a tape like Edgar Müller does, to use this, as an anchor point, for the rest of the picture. Then using identifiable points, in the drawing space, environment, with this actually being the street, I would construct my drawing outline, from reference points identified, when doing the preparation painting.

A plan. — A plan, showing how elements in the picture, can be used to mark out the drawing.

Image of street art construction plan with text to explain in more detail. — Street art construction plan with text to explain in more detail.

I would construct my outline by marking in key areas, identifying them from my original image and marking them, with a chalk stick, until I was confident I had enough information, to create my painting. I would keep going back, to the camera to view the image and check for accuracy, I would basically draw it, like any other drawing, by using reference points, from the surrounding landscape, to identify reference points in the drawing/painting. This is a necessary, continual and ongoing process, when doing any kind of drawing but even more so, when doing anamorphic perspectives, you need to be checking and double checking for accuracy, just like Julian Beever and others, my favorites are the Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

If you would like to find out more, about how to do this, then follow this link, to Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk art and see some more of his work, and get a better understanding of Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Julian Beever pavement art, sidewalk art, chalk artist, has new work that can be observed in his book (Pavement Chalk Artist) 2010, it’s a lovely full color book, showing some wonderful new images and insights about how, exactly, he found his path, to creating, this popular form of street art. I loved reading through this book and attaining a glimpse, into the artist himself, I purchased mine from Amazon . com, it was worth it, much better than any e-book, I could down load off line and sits nicely on the shelf, in my collection, begging visitors, to also take a look.

Click below to obtain a price on Amazon . com.

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