Take a
look at this art by a Malaysian artist named Brian Lai. It is obvious that he is a skilled artist,
but it looks unrefined with little detail.
The
real genius and detail of his art only comes out when you look at it through a
negative lens!
He
calls this technique invert art, and he invented it while at art school in
Malaysia. He first draws out a reference
sketch with normal coloring. Then he
inverts the colors from the normal sketch.
The hardest part is trying to get the toning right, because without
proper toning the negative version will not look as refined.
Remember how Steve Jobs learned calligraphy because he
liked it and stored it in his mind, only to retrieve it during the development
of the Macintosh. The typography on the
Macintosh is what set it above other computers.
Brian has a similar story; he was thirteen when a friend took a photo of
his signature with a negative lens.
Brian was amazed, but did not think twice about it. Seven years later, when he was in art school
that moment came back to him. He then
tried to put that effect into his art, and he created invert art. 
In Ward, Finke, and Smith’s paper Visualizing in a Creative way, they wrote, "Infusing subtle
details into mental images, scanning the images to make not of the details,
and recasting the images to see things in different perspectives can all
inspire original discoveries.” This is
exactly what happened to Brian. He had a
mental image of a negative signature, and while in art school he recalled that
image and used it to inspire his original discovery.
Check out this video of how he creates this amazing art.
Sources:
http://briartlai.blogspot.com/
http://www.visualnews.com/2013/12/13/brian-lai-draws-negative-images-become-realistic-inverted/
Week 3- Ward, Finke, Smith
Artists have always amazed me with their ability to draw such realistic drawings, but this guy just takes it to a whole new level. You do a really good job of bringing it in to class topics and readings we've had. I really like how you relate his story to the story of Steve jobs, it worked very well. I would be interested in knowing a little bit more about Brian Lai and his background. Has anyone else picked up this technique?
ReplyDeleteHis has a very interesting and inovative approach to sketching. It's weird that small, almost memories like the one when he was just 13 can come back to you and spark this sort of creativity.
ReplyDeleteThis form of drawing seems very mathematical. I would love to see a study on Brian's brain about which forms of processing he is using at different moments. He is clearly very high in the visual-spatial intelligence, but I can imagine that his ability to precisely invert values ranks high in the mathematical processing as well. Thanks for sharing! It's always interesting to hear about innovative creators in the visual arts realm!
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