Solipsistic Meanderings » All Things Art and Good II

May 4, 2008

All Things Art and Good II

(The reasons behind the series of articles titled All Things Art and Good and the format followed in each article is explained here, in the first post in the series.)

Denis Zilber is a wonderfully funny and versatile artist. You’ve only got to see the title image on his site to get an idea of his talent and his style. I just absolutely love that title image and the mood it evokes. But, I’m getting ahead of myself 🙂 Let’s begin at the beginning.

The first artwork of Denis’ that I saw was the funny, beautiful and extremely comical The Leg. The hint of darkness enveloping the left side of the image, the warm glow cast by the lamp which dispels darkness and covers everything in a rich golden glow on the right, the tiny bugs hovering around the lamp, the intriguingly greenish tinge to the sky, and the pinpoints of stars on the night sky – it all adds to the overall effect.

But most of all, what I love about The Leg are the people in it. The expressions on their faces, the little pink slippers worn by the guy holding the lantern (who for some reason I keep thinking of as "the mayor" :p), the white nightcap with a tassel on the end – these are the elements which add up to an image which is priceless 🙂 Denis commented elsewhere that he knows of no giant bird with just one foot (or something to that effect), so you know the guy has a sense of humour 😀

Then there’s the previously mentioned title image for Denis’ site – The Oldman and the Beetle. This image again illustrates one of my favourite things about Denis’ artwork – the lighting. The warmly glowing lamps on the old man’s cart pierces the gloom of the dark and creepy forest and gives you a sense of well-being, of goodness and warmth. It almost seems to say that as long as the old man travels through the forest with his warm lights, nothing bad can creep up on you 🙂 Of course, given the giant beetle and the glowing lights, I can’t help but think, what are fireflies like in this forest? How big are they and do they glow brighter than the lamps on the cart?

The interesting thing, personally for me, about Denis’ artwork is his versatility. He seems to have several different styles depending on the program he used to create the image (as well as other factors, probably). For instance, his Flash art has this hand-drawn-line quality which I like a lot. It reminds me a bit of Gary Larson of The Far Side fame 🙂 Take for example, Traveling Home. I like the simple colours, the shadowing, again the bright glow of the light, and the slightly space-and-mind bending perspective.

Another one of my favourites, again with a slightly different style, is The Journey Begins: First Encounter. This one doesn’t have so much of the humorous and cartoonish style of the other images. There’s hints of it though, for example in the face of the knight’s helper. I like the detail on the leaves, the nice blending of greens and yellows on the trees, the lines on the horse and of course, the bright glowing light, again 🙂

If I have one complaint, it is not about Denis’ art but the way the images are presented on his site. The images are cut off and so I can’t enjoy them at their full size 🙂 For instance, the title image that I keep coming back to looks much better as it does on his site than it does in the cut off format on his sample gallery. And with The Journey Begins, I can’t help but feel that there is more to that image and that I’m missing more detail because the image was cropped. Of course, I could be wrong 🙂

[pg-image src=”http://www.deniszilber.com/picts_ill/leg.jpg” caption=”The Leg” link=”http://www.deniszilber.com/viewpict1.php?fn=leg.jpg”][pg-image src=”http://www.deniszilber.com/picts_ill/oldman.jpg” caption=”The Oldman and the Beetle” link=”http://www.deniszilber.com/viewpict1.php?fn=oldman.jpg”][pg-image src=”http://www.deniszilber.com/picts_ill/edu.jpg” caption=”Traveling Home” link=”http://www.deniszilber.com/viewpict1.php?fn=edu.jpg”][pg-image src=”http://www.deniszilber.com/picts_ill/knight.jpg” caption=”The Journey Begins: First Encounter” link=”http://www.deniszilber.com/viewpict1.php?fn=knight.jpg”]