Wednesday, July 3, 2013

:girls on film:

On a whim I went looking online for books of artwork by Patrick Nagel, and found one for very cheap on Amazon and purchased it. I don't know exactly why his work has been on my mind as of late but I'm just going where the mind flows right now.


His work may scream 80s to most ( or, and I have no idea why this has become the norm, nail salons ), and certainly some of the hairstyles and clothes may cement it to that time, but I find most of his depictions of women timeless. Clearly he was fascinated by them ( although there's a quote by him in the book about the ones he depicted: "I don't think I want to know these women too well. They never come out in the sunlight. They just stay up late and smoke and drink a lot." ), and it's no surprise that most of his work appeared in Playboy.

I guess what I'm impressed with most is what he accomplished with as few lines as possible, that and the otherworldly eyes he gave them. Plus what he produced within his short life, he died before he was 40 under tragicomic circumstances. Very sobering, as I feel I haven't accomplished half of what I want to and I'm now older than him.

Very little of what I've done directly references his style, although I did take a few stabs at it. This one was done for a flier at the goth night that I DJ at, I was shooting for Siouxsie done up in Nagel's style.


No comments:

Post a Comment