A Dash of Originality, With a Grain of Salt
When people say that there's nothing new under the sun anymore, I always have a hard time believing them, because I'm surprised every day by the unexpected and amazing things that people do. Of course, this might say more about my naiveté than anything else, but that's a debate for another day. Anyway, I recently came upon something that I thought was really cool and very original: a video of a portrait drawn with salt. Not only does it take the idea of playing with your food to a new level of artistry and awesomeness, but the portrait ends up looking quite good too.
The artist in question posts a lot of videos of his portrait-drawing process on Youtube, and I always watch them because I'm genuinely in awe of his ability to depict a living, breathing person with smudges of charcoal here and some pencil strokes here. I love seeing a face emerge from blank paper, looking almost as real as a photograph but with an ineffable delicacy and softness that must come from the human touch. For a self-taught artist, he has excellent hand-eye coordination to take what his eyes see and record it faithfully on paper, as well as superb grasp of light and shadow. If I had a photo of myself worth commemorating and if expense weren't a factor, I'd be tempted to commission a portrait from him myself. Maybe someday!
Incidentally, the salt portrait isn't his first foray into drawing pictures with food. Here's a video of him drawing a lion with chocolate syrup. I think another one of his videos, as well as the resulting portrait, was bought by Ripley's Believe it or Not to be shown in their museum too. His work and videos are great to watch, no matter what the medium, but I thought drawing with salt must have been the hardest by far. Just getting the salt to stay in place, let alone rendering different tones and shades, must have been a challenge. In this video, at least, he makes it work, and he makes it look good.
The artist in question posts a lot of videos of his portrait-drawing process on Youtube, and I always watch them because I'm genuinely in awe of his ability to depict a living, breathing person with smudges of charcoal here and some pencil strokes here. I love seeing a face emerge from blank paper, looking almost as real as a photograph but with an ineffable delicacy and softness that must come from the human touch. For a self-taught artist, he has excellent hand-eye coordination to take what his eyes see and record it faithfully on paper, as well as superb grasp of light and shadow. If I had a photo of myself worth commemorating and if expense weren't a factor, I'd be tempted to commission a portrait from him myself. Maybe someday!
Incidentally, the salt portrait isn't his first foray into drawing pictures with food. Here's a video of him drawing a lion with chocolate syrup. I think another one of his videos, as well as the resulting portrait, was bought by Ripley's Believe it or Not to be shown in their museum too. His work and videos are great to watch, no matter what the medium, but I thought drawing with salt must have been the hardest by far. Just getting the salt to stay in place, let alone rendering different tones and shades, must have been a challenge. In this video, at least, he makes it work, and he makes it look good.