Jim Dine

The contrast between smudged backgrounds and very detailed drawings in Dines work is very appealing to me as the two approaches complement each other perfectly; the smudged backdrop makes the detailed image come forward.

Dine tends to sketch tools and this choice in media of charcoal makes the tools look like they have a messy, dirty feel to them. Using charcoal in this way to perhaps draw something refined wouldn’t have the same feel to it. Although, having said this, Dine does draw flowers in the same ‘messy’ way and he cleverly uses negative space in all his drawing and these are very aesthetic too. I experimented using negative space with some flower drawings based on Dines work which are below.

I particularly like the drawing of a plant by Dine below. The contrast of dark, hard lines and soft smudging is very beautiful. I also like the shading of negative spaces around the plant and the stark white against very dark patches.

 

Dine has also experimented using colour in his work as shown below. I like the subtlety of colour in this piece and the colours seem somewhat darkened by the addition of charcoal which creates a beautiful smudged effect.