Artist Reasearch: Stephen Wiltshire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Wiltshire is a British architectural artist. He is known for his ability to draw from memory a landscape after seeing it just once. His work has gained worldwide popularity. Stephen Wiltshire was born in London, England, in 1974 to Caribbean parents, His father, Colvin, was a native of Barbados, and his mother, Geneva is a native of St. Lucia. He grew up in Little Venice, Maida Vale, and London. Wiltshire was mute when young and at the age of three, he was diagnosed as autistic. The same year, his father died in a motorbike accident.

At the age of five, Wiltshire was sent to Queensmill School in London where he expressed interest in drawing. His early illustrations depicted animals and cars; he is still extremely interested in American cars and is said to have an encyclopedic knowledge of them. When he was about seven, Wiltshire became fascinated with sketching landmark London buildings. After being shown a book of photos depicting the devastation wrought by earthquakes, he began to create detailed architectural drawings of imaginary cityscapes. Soon, He began to communicate through his art. The instructors at Queensmill School would deal with his lack of verbal communication skills by temporarily taking away his art supplies so that he would be forced to learn to ask for them. Stephen responded by making sounds and eventually uttered his first word—"paper." His teachers encouraged his drawing, and with their aid Wiltshire learned to speak fully at the age of nine.

Soon people outside the school started noticing Stephen's gift and aged eight he landed his first commission - a sketch of Salisbury Cathedral for the former Prime Minister. Wiltshire can look at a subject once and then draw an accurate and detailed picture of it. He frequently draws entire cities from memory, based on single, brief helicopter rides. For example, he produced a detailed drawing of four square miles of London after a single helicopter ride above that city. Also, his nineteen-foot-long drawing of 305 square miles of New York City is based on a single twenty-minute helicopter ride.

This is one of Stephen Wiltshire’s art pieces. He drew this black and white piece from memory. In this piece you can see many roads, buildings, trees, cars and more. This piece is a great example of my influences as I am drawing buildings with a lot of detail for my skyline. Stephen focuses on the material objects rather than others like the sky. The detail he includes is so precise that the slightest line is drawn on. Most of the buildings are square and there are many roads. I like this piece because even though the artist only has two colours on the page, because of the different tones and objects the place still manages to look lively and new instead of dull and old.

The source is drawn IN 3D and in ink. The source is exactly life like and realistic. The artist marks out the trees and a few buildings harder than others to show which parts are darker than the other. Furthermore, the different tones showed where the sun is shining so the shades had to be precise.

This piece if viewed from the side and looks like the typical city life with traffic and different paths to take. The piece could be special to Stephan because it could show how he is always travelling from city to city and the different paths he chooses and makes in his career. Furthermore, I will make sure to work on tones to create different moods and ideas of aspects affecting my everyday life. Stephen looks at intricate details that most people wouldn’t even recognize so my aim is to look from different perspectives before doing anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This picture has a clearer skyline and a more detailed sky. Again, this picture has contrasting shades to show where light reflects off it or where light is. This drawing is based in London at the Big Ben and River Nile. The sky is painted purple, pink, orange and yellow to show probably sunset. The river is dark blue but then along the edge of the piece of paper the river is light blue to effectively show light and that it is water. To show that lights are on, light sources are painted bright yellow or white. There is a bus and a taxi present in the art piece and the angle the drawing is at is from the stairs. Everything is grey other than the sky, bus, taxi, lights, and the river.

This piece of work is drawn in 3D and secondary colours are used too. This piece may have been created because of the view and also this is the time when London is not very busy so the true beauty of it can be seen. This piece influenced me to think about the sky and how it could change the time of day the piece is set in. Furthermore, adding colours work better in creating strong emotions than just black and white does.

Lastly, Stephen Wiltshire uses a lot of detail that would be useful for my buildings; his use of tone and form changes the way his pieces are viewed. To evaluate my work, I will variate my tone and the way I emphasize different sections of a piece. Changing what is emphasized in a piece can change the whole meaning of that piece.