#this is all 20th century art bc those drawings are mostly abstract and experimental-looking

[roxyandelsewhere]

I just mentioned it in passing in tags but what the hell, I’m gonna make a post. If you like my trueform angel drawings, here’s a list of cool artists I’ve been inspired by when figuring out how to do them, just because I think they’re cool:

José de Guimarães (1939-): one of the biggest painters and sculptors in the 20th century Portuguese art scene. I was inspired by his general aesthetic for the way I drew the wings in Anna and fallen Cas, because I wanted to go with a more naïf thing instead of realistic, “sometimes less is more” and all that.

Alexander Calder (1898-1976): American mostly-sculptor-but-did-a-lot-of-things. I was thinking of his general aesthetic, for the same reasons as José de Guimarães, but also specifically his constellations for the way the different things overlap and occupy the space together.

Isidro Ferrer (1963-): Spanish designer and children’s books illustrator. Same thing as José de Guimarães, but more specifically for the idea that in the moments where angels’ trueforms take the shape of early things, they’re not Sophisticated earthly things. There’s the layer of what I’m saying the trueform looks like and the layer of how I draw it, and I think if a trueform snaps into random earthly things while squeezing into a human vessel and one of those things happens to be a bird, it’s not an exquisitely detailed bird, it’s a bird with a vibe that is stylized and like a child’s drawing at the same time. Earthly things through a human’s eyes being experienced for the first time. And to me that is Isidro Ferrer’s vibe simply because I had books illustrated by him as a child and I loved them, and there’s a really cool childlike wonder to his stuff that I think is great.

Saul Bass (1920-1996): American graphic designer, known for making title cards for a lot of classic movies, including some Hitchcock and Preminger ones. I based myself specifically on his work for the poster of the movie The man with the golden arm for the hands in the Bloody Valentine drawing, because I like drawing hands like that anyways and it’s a movie about addiction and ambition so it seemed appropriate.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944): Swedish painter, and some say the inventor of abstract art. She used abstract art to convey mystical and spiritual ideas and even though these trueform drawings relate to fictional characters I still took from her the idea that that’s possible to do and from there figured out my way of doing it.

Bruno Munari (1907-1998): Italian everything-man. Simply because I’ve learnt a lot from him about how to look at art and how to make it in general so I end up thinking about him whenever I make anything.

Honorable mentions for Kandinsky, David Bomberg, Escher and Marjane Satrapi because I’ve seen comparisons between their works and my drawings (special mention for Escher and Marjane Satrapi because I really love them so I was so honored by those comparisons) but I actually wasn’t thinking about any of them while I was doing this so any resemblance is purely coincidental. Or maybe internalized inspiration. Who knows. Art is cool like that. There’s other little things but this is already a long post nobody asked for so I’ll shut up.