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Gallery Of Illustrations By Simon Stalenhag - Sweden
0 Comments | 0 Likes| Gallery | Illustrations | Simon Stalenhag | Sweden

Simon Stalenhag - Sweden
Stockholm based artist Simon Stalenhag creates gorgeous paintings featuring retro futuristic scenarios where humans, machines and dinosaurs coexist.
Realities that never came to pass but are so imaginative that you can’t help but want to step inside of them.
Simon Stalenhag is an artist, musician, and designer specialising in futuristic digital paintings focused on stereotypical Swedish countryside environments. The settings of his artwork have formed the basis for a range of art books and a tabletop game.
Artwork
Stalenhag grew up in an rural environment near Stockholm, making illustrations of the local landscape inspired by artists such as Lars Jonsson.
He only attempted science fiction artwork after discovering concept artists like Ralph McQuarrie and Syd Mead; initially this body of work was done as a side project, without any planning behind it.
Thematically, his work often combines his childhood with themes from sci fi movies, resulting in a stereotypical Swedish landscape with a neofuturistic bent.
According to Stalenhag, this focus originates from his perceived lack of connection with adulthood, with the science fiction elements being added in partly to draw audience attention and partly to influence the work's mood.
These ideas result in a body of work that can feature giant robots and megastructures alongside regular Swedish items like Volvo cars.
As his work has evolved, Stalenhag has created a backstory for it, focused around a governmental underground facility.
In parallel to the real-life decline of the Swedish welfare state, large machines slowly fail, and the eventual result of this remains a mystery.
According to a 2013 interview with The Verge, The only difference in the world of my art and our world is that ... ever since the early 20th century, attitudes and budgets were much more in favour of science and technology.
Outside of his usual canon, Stalenhag also drew 28 pictures of dinosaurs for the Swedish Museum of Natural History's prehistoric exhibits, after he rediscovered his childhood interest in the creatures, and contacted the museum to see if he could do anything.
In 2016, he followed this with pictures of hypothetical results of a rising ocean under climate change for Stockholm University's Resilience Centre.
He also did some promotional artwork for the scifi video game No Man's Sky.
Stalenhag uses a Wacom tablet and computer to illustrate his work, which is designed to resemble oil painting.
Initially, he attempted to use various physical media to mimic a more traditional style, including gouache. Even after switching to digital methods, he has stated that he puts a lot of effort into making the digital brushes behave naturally and preserve a certain amount of 'handwriting' in the brush strokes.
The majority of his work is based on pre existing photographs that he takes; these are then used as a starting point for a number of rough sketches before the final work is completed.
Gallery

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