Jef Soto; Winter Death (2010.)

Jef

Jeff Soto’s piece, entitled “Winter Death,” is an illustration that I feel would inspire my future work I create for a number of reasons.

The purpose of this piece is to show the beauty of glorified death, and how something as scary as death and can be something delicate and pristine.

The style of this piece is pretty bold, the main figure being the message behind the theme of death. As well as using imagery from the same environment to give a very natural feel to the image.

This would inspire me to try and not make all of my works of art stereotypically beautiful and show a more natural, ugly side, which is still nice to look at. I also have trouble creating backgrounds for my artwork, as I am not comfortable making scenes, so using shapes colours and patterns is an idea that I will take to use on my own ideas.

The colour theme throughout this piece of artwork shows the icy tones of winter, with blues, greys and greens highlighting the fresh and crisp nature of winter. The antlers and tentacles may represent the variety of animals that this applies to, from forest wildlife to life under the sea and how everything can be in danger of death in winter.

 I would take this as inspiration to include more drawings of wildlife rather than humans alone, or incorporating body parts into human bodies to make them more mythical and interesting.

The swirls of colour around the skull could also signify the change in seasons such as spring (pink), summer (yellow), autumn (blue,) and winter (Purple.)

This piece of art was created using acrylic paint on paper, and I find this personally, to be a rather complicated way of creating art. The use of tone and light as rather apparent in this piece, using the colour scheme of grey/blue and the shades that come with it. I feel as though starting with simple images that do not have a lot of intricate detail and shapes would benefit me greatly.