In this update, we’re showcasing the visually immersive work of talented London-based Op Artist Myoshka. Myoshka, 33,  has worked in the creative side of the advertising industry for the past 15 years in jobs ranging from graphic design, web design, motion graphics through to directing, which is what he currently does.  In his spare time he creates the wonderful static and animated Op Art below.  You can see more of Myoshka’s art on his website, Myoshka.jp.  Myoshka lives in London with his 2 dogs, Akira and Kuma.

Click on any of the images below to see larger versions.

An interesting additional element to Myoshka’s work comes from his involvement in the creative world of tattooing and some of his art has now been permanently etched to skin.

“Art is my refuge from a world of briefs and deadlines, a place where the only restriction is my own creativity.  I was introduced to sacred geometry by my good friend tomastomas, a tatoo artist whose work continues to be an inspiration for me.  Over the coming years I found myself immersed in patterns, and for the first time I saw my art committed to skin.  Through sharing what I created I met many different people and artists from around the world, some of whom I’m now proud to call friends.”

Myoshka also works with the clothing company Maharishi and will be exhibiting a collection of screenprints at the Maharishi store in 2012.

Q. Did you study art?

No. I taught myself and learned through osmosis working with various creatives and artists along the way.

Q. Why do you like Op Art in particular?

I get lost in it. It moves. It twists. It draws me in. I love it’s simplicity. Black and white. Negative and positive. Balance.

Q. How do you make your art? Do you use a computer? If so what software do you use?

Illustrator mainly. But also Photoshop.

Q. What’s the process for making one of your artworks?

Everything is done in downtime from my day job so I try and create as freely as possible. Sometimes I’ll have had a thought in the day, or have seen something that sparked an idea. Mostly though, I open up illustrator and see what happens, what takes my fancy. It just goes from there. One night I won’t make anything I’m happy with, another I’ll have a complete breakthrough. I just put the thoughts out there and see what comes back. Like night fishing for geometry.

Q. Any other art you like.

Islamic art / Sacred Geometry / Tattoo / all things Japanese.

Q. Do you have any favourite artists?

tomastomas has been the biggest influence in my art – a good friend and incredible tattoo artist. Just today discovered David Szakaly through browsing your features – amazing. Obviously a huge fan of Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley. Favourite artists at the moment is Toby Zeigler.

[Note – to see more of David’s & Myoshka’s superb Op Art animations, click here]

Q. Anything else you like doing?

Walking my two dogs Akira & Kuma. Tattoo. Directing (my day job). Collaborating with Maharishi.

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Myoshka is also a big fan of electronic music and has experimented with combining music and art.  You can see one of these interesting and immersive experiments below – a further two are linked below that.

http://youtu.be/4LZWaMEFUR4

http://youtu.be/0kmMmuvCrJg

I’m really pleased to be starting 2012 with a hugely talented South American Op Artist, Tony.  Tony runs the blog ‘Tony Digital Art & Design‘ where he posts up his artwork.  I originally came across Tony via Marco Braun‘s flickr page, and contacted him late last year.  After agreeing to show his work on the site, I had the difficult task of picking out 8 pieces for this post: ‘difficult’ because Tony’s Op Art is all so incredibly good it’s almost impossible to choose one piece over another.

Tony, who is 43, works as an Industrial Designer, was born and raised in Argentina,  and has his own vinyl graphics and ‘giant printing’ company.

“I am really keen on geometry and color, and I draw my artwork completely in my computer, in vector format, which enables me to print it to any size keeping the art definition. I really enjoy handling geometry, color and vectors in my computer.  I just sit down in front of the computer and start experimenting freely with shapes and colors. As time goes by, ideas start to come up, as do ways of experimenting with those shapes and colors.”

If you visit Tony’s design blog, you’ll notice that all of his pieces are named after songs he likes.

“I am frequently asked about the reason for choosing names of songs for my artwork. I pick the names of songs that I like and that bear no relation to the artwork. I prefer not to give an artwork any name that might condition its viewing, which I consider should be as neutral as possible.”

Tony is a huge fan of early abstract art and of each successive movement of abstract and kinetic art right up to the present day.

Aside from his art, Tony really enjoys kayaking in the delta of the Tigre, in Buenos Aires, as well as golfing and other outdoor activities.  You can see some great photos of Tony’s kayaking excursions on his Delta Argentino blog.  If you’d like to see more of Tony’s artwork, then I can’t recommend highly enough Tony’s Digital Art & Design Blog.  Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of Tony’s work on the site in the future.

It’s that family time of year, so we thought it would be nice for Christmas to return to the pupils of Maryland Primary School in London to show some of the final pieces from their Op Art project.  The junior Op Artists here are all 4 years old.

Each piece is shown alongside the Bridget Riley work it was based on.  The italic text is a description from Dale (the teacher who helped the children to create the pieces).

Movement in Squares

“We made ‘Movement in Squares’ by cutting squares of black sugar paper and sticking on to white paper.  The children cut strips from the squares, making them progressively smaller.”

Composition with Circles

“We recreated ‘Composition with Circles’ using a cup to print with black paint.”

Shadow Play

“Shadowplay was made on a large scale.  Every child drew around a template on to a colour of their choice.  They then cut them out and we assembled a whole class picture.”

Fall

“Fall’ was created by cutting our own stencils, then drawing around them numerous times to create the repeating pattern.”

Two Blues

“We created 2 blues by cutting shapes from 2 different shades of blue and arranging them on white paper. 2 oranges was our version of 2 blues.  We printed different shades of orange and arranged them in to a whole class ‘fire’ picture for bonfire night.”

Thanks once again to Dale, Lorraine and all the children of Maryland Primary School for making this project happen and Happy Christmas to everybody!

The latest additions to the Op Art Gallery are the work of 71 year old Op Artist Terry Healy.

“I have always been interested in art and started drawing at a very early age but it was not until the late 1960’s that I really started to paint in Oils.   I was always interested in geometry and when I first saw the paintings of Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley everything clicked into place and I started experimenting with my own ideas.

It took sometime before my own ideas really took hold and putting them into practice was yet another learning curve namely with light, shade, perspective and colour and I am constantly learning new ways to express what I have learned over the years into my new work.   Now that modern computers give us such a rich colour palette this extends not only the ideas but colour too and one can achieve these ideas very quickly and my new works ‘Xroads’ and ‘Kinetica 34’ expresses these graphically.   Complex variations are quickly achieved which otherwise would take days to draw and colour  are almost infinite in there variations.   The programme I use is Photoshop and I have yet to find another one that enables me to achieve my ideas.   I have also been involved in Graphic design for many years designing anything from Album/CD covers to leaflets and again with modern computers ideas and variation are endless and quickly produced.

I have no formal training even though I wanted to go to Art College but other commitments denied me that opportunity.”

All images copyright Terry Healy.

Collections: 

Bradford University

Leeds Grammar School

Stanley Burton

Simcron Architects, Cleckheaton.

Exhibitions: 

Leeds Art Gallery ( Art Group) 1971/1976

Yorkshire Artists Exhibition 1971

One Man Show – Swarthmore Educational Centre 1972

West Riding Exhibition, Wakefield 1973

Sheffield Open Art Exhibition 1974

Bradford University 1976

Aside from his love of Op Art, Terry is a huge music fan, with tastes ranging from ambient through to blues, rock, Delta Blues, Trance, and 1940’s.  Terry has his own small recording studio as he used to mix for local bands.  Another great thing about Terry is that he has a pub in his basement overlooking the garden with a jukebox and sound system.  Excellent!

Bradley G Munkowitz has over a decade of experience functioning as a design director for the motion graphics industry and has continued to remain passionately involved in the global design community, giving lectures in countries around the world including Australia, Korea, Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Canada, England and the USA.

He began his professional career as an Interactive Designer at London-based Vir2L Studios Europe, while also crafting immersive web experiences on his cult site GMUNK.com, winning a grip of awards for web excellence and innovation while inspiring a generation of interactive storytellers. Bradley has worked as a design director for international brands via his work at top tier outfits Engine Design, Transistorstudios, BUCK and Prologue Films.

He spent the entirety of 2010 playing in the darkness at Digital Domain leading a black-ops team of GFX All-Stars to concept, design and execute over 12 minutes of holographic content for the feature film TRON Legacy.

Optical Art is one of those “perfect stylistic design aesthetics” and something he sees as “infinitely engaging”. Bradley builds his Op Art works using the 3D modelling software Maya first creating a virtual 3D Optical Art landscape before reducing it to the final 2D image.

Update: New Work – April 2012

From the Infrared5 mural created for Boston Tech Company Infrared5.

From the ‘Freestyle Optical’ series:

“Predictably, munkowitz rocked freestyle, generating an assortment of Op-ularized Optical Opulence to give the eyeballs a solid workout, and to further the development and technique of his favorite design aesthetic… In some future decade, he might be a 1/10th as fresh as his design hero: the Master Gilmore; it takes time no doubt….”