art – The Daily Opinion

Interview with Nadilyn Beato – Wildlife Illustrator

Nadilyn Beato has established a strong reputation amongst reptile lovers as an extremely talented painter, sculptor and digital illustrator, even attracting the attention of Tomahawk Reptiles to make a sculpture of their logo. She’s also the mastermind behind powerhouse reptile breeder BHB‘s logo, and countless others. She found some time in her busy schedule to answer some questions about herself, her work, and her love of nature’s more exotic animals.

Firstly, tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Nadilyn Beáto, I’m a 23-year-old New York-based Freelance Illustrator/Designer. I graduated from Parsons School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Illustration in May of 2012.

How did you get started in art, both personally and professionally?

I’ve been making art since I could get my hands on crayons. Art is my passion and after I graduated from high school I decided to continue my education doing what I love to do. I attended Parsons School for Design on a HEOP grant, which stands for Higher Education Opportunity Program. I started to freelance when I was a sophomore in college. The government decided to cut TAP grants and I had to take out loans to cover the cost of my tuition. Attending college full time gave me very little time to find a part time job. I decided to freelance and I was fortunate enough to get some jobs from people who appreciated my work. I recently graduated last May, and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Illustration.

Your website, apart from being incredibly well designed, showcases some astounding work of a range of wonderful and exotic animals. What do you use as a basis for the animals that you don’t have as pets?

For animals that I don’t have as pets I get my reference from a variety of photos. I used to use several photos for reference when creating a piece. There are always certain aspects from other photos I like to merge together in my mind to create the final piece.

Although you are a wildlife illustrator, a look at your prints and sculptures shows a large body of work focused on reptiles. Compared to the number of people with cats and dogs, reptile ownership is a relatively small niche; was it a conscious decision to focus on that market over other animals?

I mainly focus on reptiles because I own a lot of reptiles. I feel most people only associate “cute” with soft and furry animals and reptiles are not considered beautiful. I think this stems from the media and a common misrepresentation of reptiles. Reptiles are beautiful and every time I create a piece I want to immortalize my subject’s beauty for others to appreciate.

Do you prefer doing one over the other, for instance the paintings over the sculptures?

I like doing both equally. It is always fun to switch things up once in while. I am very grateful I am able to work with a variety of mediums.

A digital illustration; view the making of in the video below

A look at your Facebook and Instagram pages indicate that much of your work is relatively small – pendants, prints, daily creature drawings etc. Then came the tremendous sculpture commission from Tomahawk Reptiles, of the pied python on the axe, which seemed to be much bigger than your usual work. Do you find such projects daunting,and is there any size job you would refuse?

I actually enjoy working larger. My Senior Thesis in college was a collection of 6 very large sculptures ranging from 7-12 inches tall. The biggest I have made was 12 inches tall; I am always open to any bigger commissions.

Nadilyn's sculpture for Tomahawk Reptiles — Nadilyn’s sculpture for Tomahawk Reptiles

Following on from that, what would be your ultimate commission? Would you enjoy being immersed in a project that lasts months, like a huge King Kong on the Empire State, or do you prefer the smaller gigs where you work on a wide range in a short space of time?

My ultimate commission would be maybe a life-sized pet, like a lizard or snake. I think that would be a great challenge and a fun experience.

You’ve drawn, painted and sculpted everything from rats and parrots to lizards and crocodiles, and your pets include tarantulas. Do you have a favourite animal?

That is a tough question. I really like all animals but if I had to choose one it would be a Tarantula. I love how unique and interesting they are. They are gorgeous little creatures misunderstood by society and judged for their appearance instead of the good they do. They consume a lot of pests in the wild. They are just adorable little fluffy critters.

Is there a favourite animal to sketch or sculpt? Are the long shapes of snakes less challenging than a feathered animal or spiky lizard?

My favourite animal to sketch and sculpt would be a snake. It is always a challenge when it comes to painting the patterns on snakes, but I love challenges.

Who are your inspirations, in life and for your work?

My inspirations are nature, my pets and Thomas Shahan. I love his illustrations and macro photography. He takes macro shots of jumping spiders and I feel that his photos make people appreciate the beauty of those unique little critters.

Where do you hope to be in 10 years’ time?

In 10 years I hope to continue making art and doing what I love to do. I really want to work for zoos doing anything art related, or work for wildlife conservation organizations creating art for their fundraising campaigns. In the end anything animal or art related would be awesome.

To view Nadilyn’s work, order her work or put in a custom order:

The Super Di Duper Magical Cat Flying Machine

I think that all of us will have heard about the helicopter cat created by the Dutch artist Bart Jansen. So far we have had reactions from outrage, to shock, to rambunctious applause. But what do we think of the cat really?

Animal rights protest — What some people thought he did.

First of all, let’s get the story out of the way. The story is that Mr. Jansen’s cat was run over by a car. So naturally that made him into a pancake cat. So the pancake cat would have normally being buried with much sadness and despair. Instead of this, Mr. Jansen had a wonderful idea: he decided to make his cat into a flying helicopter by stuffing him and attaching motors. He can now be controlled by remote control, as well as being able to fly around the room and scare small children.

So this was then posted onto the wonderful world of the Internet and then it went viral and here we are. Major news stations like the BBC and CNN, as well as newspapers like the Daily Mail, are picking it up and there are now talks of selling it. In fact, there’s a bid of 100,000 Euros on the table for the whole thing; although I wouldn’t touch it personally as knowing my luck I’d end up buying it and then the Euro would collapse making it completely worthless.

The Dutch government hasn’t taken helicopter cat as well as everybody was hoping though, as it has written to a number of arts fairs in protest. A number of irritating activists have also put graffiti over some art buildings that says: “Kill the animal killers!” (in Dutch obviously) Now, I can’t help but see the logical flaw in this statement. Firstly, he didn’t kill Orville the cat, he merely did what any taxidermist did, and then arguably went too far. Secondly, what are they going to do? Are they going to start attacking drivers of cars who accidentally run small, furry animals over? I highly doubt it.

Daffy Duck

Idiots aside, is helicopter cat ethical? My answer is that it’s ethical because what we have to remember is that the cat was dead. He didn’t kill his cat or damage it in any way. He merely had it stuffed then altered it. Stuffing a family pet is common practice all over the world and few people complain about it. So what’s wrong with this? Is it due to the fact that Orville had a motor added to him? Or is it due to the fact that some people are just jealous of success in this sort of thing? I believe that it’s a combination of both.

Whenever something becomes really successful there are always those who complain about it. These people are miserable and just love to complain about nothing. They are always there and they should be completely ignored. Now, the subject of adding a motor to the cat is a little more genuine. I can completely understand the view from animal lovers that it’s a bit disrespectful to the cat. Completely understandable and I’m not going to fault people for that.

Whatever you happen to think about Orville the cat, on a motor, you all have to agree that it’s pretty damn creative and is an amusing distraction from the monotony of daily life.

E.T. Gets His Guns Back

Anyone for whom the 1982 film “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” is a treasured childhood memory will have shared my rage when, back in 2002, Steven Spielberg and his producer Kathleen Kennedy digitally disarmed the cops pursuing the cute alien and his human pal, replacing their firearms with walkie-talkies. At the time, Ms Kennedy had worked hard to placate fans, explaining that Spielberg had always regretted the presence of weapons in the film and had thought it nonsensical that police would have tooled up to go chasing children (um, children and an alien, and this is America, but hey, who am I to stereotype?). This edit, one of many made for the theatrical re-release of the movie to mark its 20^th anniversary, has been lambasted and quite shamelessly parodied since, particularly by the satirical geniuses behind South Park (the “Free Hat” episode). And there’s a good reason for the reaction: swapping out guns for walkie-talkies was a damn silly thing to do, and quite frankly smacked of an aging man getting embarrassingly jiggy with new technology in an attempt to reconnect wiv da kidz.

Well, it would seem that over the next nine years Mr Spielberg had a change of heart, and by 2011 had admitted that he regretted this “pointless” alteration of what is arguably his greatest film ever. (Seems Spielberg has a lot of regrets – I hope the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is one of them.) I’m sure that fans and geeks everywhere will be ecstatic to hear that, in the 30^th anniversary Blu-ray edition of ET, which will be released in Autumn 2012, the walkie-talkies are out and the guns are back in. Hell, I’m happy enough, and I don’t even have a Blu-ray player.

I can understand that directors, like many artists, are rarely wholly satisfied with their finished product and are often itching to tinker with it – take Picasso, for example, who would keep paintings back, sometimes for years, in order to continue adding to them – or Leonardo da Vinci, who reputedly said that art is never finished, only abandoned. But when your work has had such a positive effect on so many people, shouldn’t you just be content? With that level of impact, is it even really “yours” to tinker with anymore? Or do you make like Mr Lucas and insist that “my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it”? There are those who say that art is inherently selfish, but when you sell your art to others, it kinda becomes theirs.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Magic Poo Machine

It sounds like a great title for a book does it not? Ok, maybe it’s just me then. Even though the title sounds too unreal to possibly be believable, it’s true. There’s a poo machine on our planet right now. And no, it’s not your grandmother or your bald-headed cousin fresh out of the womb. It’s actually in a museum in Tasmania.

Australia can be a strange place and this is just one of the reasons why. Dubbed as an ‘adult Disneyland’, the Museum of Old and New Art features a number of works, such as Egyptian mummies and pieces of art by young artists from all over the world.

However, none of these is the main attraction. And that is the legendary poo machine. Created by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, this machine is designed to replicate the human digestive system. It does so through a number of glass receptacles that hang in a row. The machine is then fed from one end and the device steadily digests its meal and then ejects it at 2pm daily.

The truth is that many visitors can’t handle the smell and some even throw up. I’ve no idea where they get its fuel from, but I’d like to think that it’s not from the staff. Surprisingly, the machine is actually hated by many visitors, and yet it also gets the most visits.

Now this certainly does challenge one’s interpretation of what art is. To me it seems more like a piece of engineering genius than anything else. If you look at the picture we have provided here then it looks more like an elegant machine than art. I would even argue that it could be used as a teaching tool to demonstrate the digestive system. Obviously, it wouldn’t be a live demonstration due to health and safety, however I think that a video link would be good.

This is not the only machine like this, though. This machine, which is actually named the Cloaca, is part of a series. Apparently, there are about five similar machines that have already been created by the artist. One of these poo machines will actually be exhibited at the Louvre in the very near future. Just don’t put it anywhere near the Mona Lisa or her facial expression will turn into a frown!

The Multimillion Pound Art Sale and the Joke that is Contemporary Art

If you take a look at the picture I have provided you just below this paragraph then what would you say about this example of contemporary art? Painted by an eight-year-old, bland and boring, basic and amateurish? I would say all of those things, but what would you say if I told you that someone paid £53.8m for it?

Red, Orange, Yellow — The 'masterpiece' on show.

It’s no joke; somebody broke the record for the highest price ever paid for a piece of contemporary art at auction.

The piece itself was painted by Mark Rothko and is entitled “Orange, Red, Yellow”. And if you look at some of his other work then you will discover that he has made a fortune on the same idea. This is just different shades of colour on a canvas in quite frankly basic and pathetic shapes.

When I want to see art I want to see skill. And that’s what one of the dictionary definitions of art is: “Skilled.” Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, Cezanne, Botticelli, all of these were skilled at what they did. This is an insult to art and this is precisely why many people believe that contemporary art is utter trash. I’m one of these people and I just hope that whoever paid for this realises how stupid he is.

And I know that fans of this are going to try and put people off with their elitist rhetoric about how some people are too stupid to see the true meaning in it. But you can find meanings in anything if you like, it doesn’t make the item you are taking a meaning from art, though.

Take a stereotypical yellow, number two test pencil, with eraser, and here is my meaning for it:

“This pencil demonstrates the transitioning of the past to the modern day as this tool has been transformed from the creative purposes it was once instilled with to the rigid structuring of modern day life. The point is the crowning glory of what can symbolise the pointlessness of the modern educational system and the stifling of creative thought. And, yet, at the same time, the fact that it creates these feelings is a demonstration of artistic genius in itself.”

I could go on, but it demonstrates that you can see a meaning in even the most mundane things.

I’ve also noticed something else quite interesting as well. If we look back to the past, and I mean centuries prior to this one, the skilled were praised. The skilled were praised in a society that was rather primitive. And those skilled artists of today are still incredibly difficult to replicate in our modern age, without the aid of computers. But as we have advanced throughout the ages we have actually opted for more primitive forms of art; and this is what we call contemporary art.

The only thing that is skilled here is the fact that Mark Rothko managed to convince someone to pay that much for something that was most likely painted within a day.

This is nothing but a few colours splashed on to the page in a childlike manner. As we advance further, are artists just going to debase themselves further in a sad attempt to seem different?

That’s something that has always bothered me about the art industry. They are so desperate to move away from mainstream society that they are willing to damage their own art because of it.

This further enhances my view that contemporary art is based off of nothing but connections and who has the most cash. Granted, to an extent, it was always like this. But no artist can succeed with things like this without having powerful and influential connections and lots of money to do the talking.