Leaf of the Day: Vegetable People and Alien Salad

I have had to knuckle down to writing today.. well re-writing to be exact. The exhibition will have extracts from the blog to accompany the drawings but that means cutting and re working them for a bigger type face, fewer words and less images. In essence, reducing them to just a few interesting facts about what will be shown. It's so difficult and very time consuming and wish I had fewer to choose from. But I have achieved 10 texts today, 30 more to go and I also framed a couple more pieces too..so no time at all for drawing.

Now the dreaded kohlrabi is in the post I can face veg again with more interest and while I was painting it I was musing on the wonderful and bizarre work of the 16th Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, wondering whose face I might try to replicate and just where the kohlrabi would go.
Here is the "The Vegetable Gardener" c 1590 a visual pun which can be turned upside down.



and one of the Seasons, series "Autumn" 1573


Images from Olgas Gallery here

I have looked quite hard but can't find a kohlrabi anywhere.. sensible man..

There is a wonderful book called "The Archimboldo Effect" which was produced alongside an exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice back in 1987. It contains of a collection of images illustrating composite portraits and other transformed heads from the Renaissance to contemporary art.
Many have been inspired to make their own homage to these strange paintings either in 2D or 3D, but "Salad" by Till Nowak digital artist, designer and filmmaker, is just wonderful...



"In November 2006 Till Nowak created the image "Salad". For this image he created digital vegetable models and combined them to become a tribute to the fantastic biomechanical creations of H.R. Giger and the vegetable portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. "
see more of his stunning work here and there is a great PDF showing the developmental work of "Salad" here.



Hmmmm...I still see no kohlrabies...