I had heard of him before, but I came across a quote by him today that I truly identified with:
“I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams”
A Polish fantasy surrealist, he depicted haunting images that somehow look familiar, perhaps in the collective subconscious of sleep. He painted and manipulated photographs, though I prefer his paintings.These are the images I wish I could create, but my mind always seems closed when I put pencil to paper.
All images courtesy Belvedere Gallery

Something I have been reading up on recently, and getting back to my animation roots, is dynamic gesture. I feel I’m a major failure in this area, my need for symmetry in my paintings creates something far worse – uber boringness. Everything in animation is about line of action – create interesting shapes with your characters, tell a story entirely within a pose. Add a C or an S to your characters silhouette and it will shine. A fantastic blog post on the subject I found today here:

Lines of Action in Mickey’s A Christmas Carol

Animators have it easy, they get to use 24 images a second to tell their story, whilst wildly failing their characters arms about. And I love it. But in illustration, you need to find that key pose at just the right moment or your whole painting will fall apart. Of course the only way out of this hole I’ve dug myself into is to draw my way out. So I also came across these sites today, devoted to gesture drawing, and with a SFW option how awesome is that!

www.artsyposes.com

www.pixelovely.com

I must draw. I must draw everyday. Repeat mantra.