Ben Heine

Ben Heine was born on 12 June 1983.  He is a Belgian multi-disciplinary artist who started as a painter and political cartoonist, who became more famous for his 'pencil versus camera' work which is his most widely published work.  He studied as a painter and sculptor at Hastings but considers himself self taught in drawing and photography.  I have picked Heine as I really like his 'pencil versus camera' work and I think it is a brilliant idea, one that I would really like to try if I ever get the chance to.

This is one of his pieces created by combining a photo of a mountain in Cape Verde and a drawing of a erupting volcano that forms the world map.  I really like the imaginativeness of this piece and the two pieces line up perfectly.  The photo has a great sense of depth to it with the car in the foreground and the massive mountain dominating the background.  The drawing in the photo also displays tone really effectively through the shading.

I really like this piece as it has a really nice contrast between the two mediums and the way he has added some quirky things into the drawing part of it like his finger tip being cut off and the writing.  The photo displays both tonal contrast, the white paper and the dogs head, as well as contrast between colours, the gold and black fur and the green grass (bottom right) and the dog's black fur.

I find this piece fantastic as both the photograph of Heine and the drawing show form well and have a sense of depth to them.  I really like the way he has set this up so it is quite literally 'pencil versus camera' and makes it seem like he has just finished drawing the 'other' him at the same time as the 'other' is taking a photograph of him.  The photo also has contrast between the actual him in colour and his black and white counter part.

Firstly, I must say how great this piece is and how taking inspiration from one of the greatest games of all time is a fantastic idea and that Heine has implemented it amazingly well, by taking a photo of some buildings on a cliff and adding in the drawing of part of a Tetris game using blocks of buildings with a nice added touch of little people standing on some of the blocks.  The photo contains a few of the formal elements such as depth; his hand compared to the size of the buildings and colour; the different buildings as well as the sea, sky and cliff.

Ben Heine's work has inspired me to pay more attention to the detail so that I get the photo that I want.  I am inspired by the way his 'pencil versus camera' work, although I think some of the drawings are edited into the photo afterwards, I know that some are actually part of the original photo and the level of detail is still almost perfect, while at the same time having some creative fun.

In summary Ben Heine plays around with his work a lot and in appearance would seem not to take it very seriously and with a lot of his 'camera versus pencil' work he takes the photos first, looks back through them, creates a drawing to match then photos it separately and edits it in.  His work demonstrates that you don't always have to accept what is there at that point in time, you can change it yourself if you want.