It’s always very strange to speak about something favorite, when it concerns art. Art itself is too many-sided, too extraordionary … How can I call some artist, for instance, the best one?! However, I will say to you, that I have my so-called favourite artist. And this artist is – Maurits Cornelis Escher. There is no doubt, that his masterpieces impress me greatly…
I found his self-portrait very unsusul. We can see here, how Escher and the interior of his studio in Rome are reflected in the mirrored sphere that he holds in his hand. By the way, Escher’s preoccupation with mirrored reflections and visual illusion belongs to a tradition of northern European art established in the fifteenth century. Here you can see this self-portrait:
As concerns the technick, Escher often used his drawings as studies for prints, but he occasionally also experimented with various drawing techniques. His most important experiments are the “scratch drawings” for which he evenly coated the paper with lithographic drawing ink. He then drew on the prepared surface with a pointed tool, scoring or scratching into it to produce his image. This technique, which he first employed in 1929, led Escher directly to his work in lithography.
By the way, many of his graphical and conceptual boons are included in artistic symbols of the twentieth century paintings, and were “quoted” by other painers as well. At the same time, Escher’s artworks refer to elitism.
One of the most curious things about this artist, obviously, is that he found inspiration for his works in reading mathematical articles. Can you believe it? The articles about tiling, for instance, inspired him greatly. Those articles, where you can usually find information about a way of arranging identical plane shapes so that they completely cover an area without overlapping, made this gay to draw SUCH GREAT THINGS! It sounds very sophisticated, isn’t it?
However, he found his inspiration in such away. May be for me it will also be a useful idea to look through my school manuals in order to find some new ideas for my drawings? Why not to to read a manual of chemistry or physics, for example? Someday I should think about it.
darkbluepaintbrush 