Week #7 ('21) Art Appreciation
Welcome to my weekly Art Appreciation post, where I provide a list of some amazing album covers, single art, and random art that have come out within the past week. I’ll give you the artist/photographer/painter/magician’s name, as well as any social media or websites where you can go and check out more of their work. Click here to go back and see some other Art Appreciation posts.
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This week was a lighter one for content, but it gives us a great opportunity to dive a little bit deeper into one specific piece, and take on the concept of an entire artistic medium: comic books. Comic books have been a part of popular culture for well over a century now here in America, arguably longer in the other regions of the world, and have come to represent a balance of a structural narrative and colorful artistic expression. That latter point is what we’ll be exploring a little bit today, so strap in.
Remember, use this post to follow and subscribe to these artists; they deserve as much recognition as the musicians they collaborate with.
Artist(s): Tokebi
The Awakening, by Hobgoblin
Tokebi is, for all intents and purposes, an expert of the art of the skull. The human skull, a symbol of death, is sort of turned up on it’s head in Tokebi’s art, instead portraying the ghoulish object as a multi-colored and thematically varied prop, placing it in the context of sci-fi, western, futuristic cyberpunk, and even some more traditional “day of the dead” type portrayals, all of which you can find on his Instagram page down below. But, in looking at everything he has up for view, you can see that he has taken a few extra steps to make this piece he created for Hobgoblin’s newest tape The Awakening one that speaks to a totally different medium: comic books. Most of Tokebi’s work focuses on black backgrounds from which he builds a colorful world of neons, and this piece is no different, but its in the actual creation and details of the piece where you can see how he has adapted his style, and it all starts with something called Ben Day Dots. Ben Day dots, by way of what was known as the Ben Day process, are, in the simplest terms possible, a way to drastically reduce the amount of ink used in a piece; the process uses the basic four printing colors, across several planes, spread out in a series of dots, meant to provide the illusion of a solid color. However, the key thing to take away from this is the cultural usage of this technique, the creation of an aesthetic that is almost exclusively evocative of comic book media in the Silver Age, and it’s usage here in Tokebi’s piece, almost exaggerated in a way that is meant to draw attention to these dots and say “look at how badass this shit is”, plays on that same sense of nostalgia. Funnily enough, Tokebi’s usage of the dots here are entirely aesthetic; you can look and see how he his colors are like paint spills, very rounded and splotched, but the dots are not informing these color patterns like you would see in an old Superman comic book. The other element to this, and one that’s a little bit more on the nose with the comic book theme, are the large, block letters, very much like the title page of one of those vintage (damn near antique) comic books of old, thrown in this piece with that Halloween-esque font. Practically, it’s a great choice to, ya know, tell us what album we’re about to be listening to, but it’s also a great throwback to a time in comic book media where the title of an issue was just as important as the narrative you’d find inside. Both of these things, the Ben Day Dots and the use of text, are stylistic departures from Tokebi’s usual style, while still maintaining the skull as the centerpiece so that you get the standard Tokebi experience. I highly recommend going out there and taking a look at some of his other work, as it’s all amazing.
Tokebi's Website/Tokebi's Instagram
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