medium | Outside The Lines

There are many different mediums with which to create art. Some of those art constituents include various types of paint, chalk pastels, charcoal pencils, mosaic fragments, metals, and the like. But would you ever imagine that hole punch dots could be used to craft incredible portraits? An artist from the United Kingdom is proving to the world that these dots are definitely a worthy art medium.

Artist Nikki Douthwaite has made a practice of collecting hole punch dots for the past three years. After sorting them by shade, she uses the dots to create portraits, which are “inspired by magazine photos,” of pop icons. The artist was led to use this particular medium after studying Gorges Seurat (pointalist artist) in school.

How exactly does one craft a large portrait out of hole punch dots? The answer is, with patience and very carefully. Douthwaite uses tweezers to place the dots onto her canvas. She commented, “I use the dots like paint. I do different colors for the feel of the picture, and there are thousands of colors in each piece.”

According to the artist, the most time-consuming aspect of the portrait process is composing subjects’ hair. Facial features are reportedly “easy.” Oddly, Nikki Douthwaite admitted that “the younger and prettier (a subject is), the harder I seem to find it, as there seems to be less distinguishing features.” Douthwaite reported that each of her works of art takes 6 to 15 weeks to complete.

Some of Nikki Douthwaite’s portrait subjects include Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Jemi Hendrix, and Simon
Cowell. Monroe’s portrait required about 100,000 dots, whereas Cowell’s took an amazing 189,000 dots. The artist spent a liberal amount of time on all her pieces, include the portrait on John Lennon, which demanded 140,000 hole punch dots.

More and more artists are bringing art out of the box and demonstrating that the sky is truly the limit when it comes to art mediums. If hole punch dots are being used to create attention-grabbing art, imagine what other elements could be used to compose art that makes the world turn its head.

http://on.today.com/PQ7Ri4

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Many people would assume that an artist would use mediums such as paints, chalks, and charcoals to create pieces of art with. Without a doubt, these mediums are judged by most to be harmless. But when does an artist cross the line into using art mediums that might be considered inappropriate? This is the question some are asking Vincent Castiglia, an artist whose art medium is drawn from his own body.

Vincent Castiglia, an artist from New York, uses his blood as paint. He has been using this highly unique, watercolor-like medium for about a decade, and as a result has experienced success in his career as an artist. Castiglia commented that he purposely began using blood as paint, though in the beginning he merely “dabbed” it onto his drawings (made of pen and ink). Later he progressed to using blood to create whole paintings with.

How much blood does it take to craft just one painting? Castiglia said a 7-foot painting requires a potential 30 vials of blood. Reportedly, the out-of-the-box artist will take only “15 vials of blood at one time” from himself – he made the point that this amount of blood is smaller than the quantity in a blood bank donation.

Castiglia’s work is drawing attention from the media as well as from the art world. His paintings are popular and sell for up to $26,000. Part of the high cost of the pieces is attributed to the time it takes to complete them (some paintings take Castiglia months to finish).

When do you know that an artist has taken their desire for a creative art medium too far? When they begin to potentially harm theirself in the pursuit of creating innovative art? Some would say yes, this is going to far. Others would think pushing the limits to such a degree is good for an artist and shows a great amount of dedication to art itself. Everyone will no doubt have their own strong opinion on this point. There is one thing that cannot be argued about Vincent Castiglia’s artwork: It is literally a part of him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/vincent-castiglia-artist-blood_n_1948333.html

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