Interview for Cultural Voice

Portrait of Ben Heine by Rolando

Ben and model in a science Museum

French, they say, is the language of love. Ben Heine, graphic artist, musician, and photographer dabbles in a different sort of love, the love of art. This cultural aristocrat, if there ever were one, is a man of diverse culture, a speaker of at least six languages, Heine is the quintessential cosmopolitan, without the usual air of self-indulgence and smugness which typically attend folks who have achieved as he has. 

A Gallery Of Talent

Rainbow Canyon

“It is not the fact that being an artist is something I wanted to be absolutely, it’s just that art came to me, I didn't have any choice” Ben proclaims poetically. “It’s the only thing I am not bad at. I am not anything else, so I guess, I am an artist.” Heine naturally eschews praise, refusing to rest on his laurels. “Art is not a goal in and of itself, it’s just a description. Every person is an artist; it’s just that sometimes they don’t know it. We are all able to express things. All we need is to find the right tools, the right time, the right people and the right place to do so.”

Ben playing the piano in his studio

An aspiring musician with an unmolested love for electronic music, Heine plays the piano and the guitar but considers himself the consummate drummer. “Music is more powerful,” he interjects, a startling confession for an artist whose claim to fame is a non-musical endeavour. “I started playing music two years ago secretly,” that is, until he developed the confidence to share his passion with the world. His love for music marries well with his love for graphic art, “It complements my graphic work and it helps me to grow as an artist.”

Ben's Bob and Marilyn portraits

This is readily apparent in Heine’s graphically artful recreation of Bob Marley, who he says, inspires him because of “his message and values of universality and inclusivity.” It is these “timeless themes that inspire my work, as well as notions of freedom, happiness, love and friendship, it gives me hope and strength and it helps me to live a better life.”

The Birth Of “Pencil Vs Camera”

Heine started putting pencil to paper when he was only eleven years of age. Traditionally trained and schooled in journalism and communications at the prestigious Belgian university, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where he began, and later completed his studies at IHECS Journalism High School. 

Project for Museum Night Fever

Heine tried his hand at political cartoons. This brief encounter was far less charitable to him than he had hoped, “it only brought me trouble.” His political activism, at the cusp of his youth, unleashed a string of criticism and threats. In the end, Heine felt it was perhaps wiser to spend his talent elsewhere and walked away from political cartoons, vowing never to return.

PvsC Behind the scene

All was not lost, however. It was his training in photography during his studies that wedded his drawing to his camera. “I wasn’t satisfied with only drawing or only photography, so I had to find a way to merge the two and this is how Pencil Vs Camera was born.” Arguably the most successful artistic collection Heine has created so far, Pencil Vs Camera, hopes to “bring some imagination and surrealism to the photography,” creating “an interesting combination.” This series of artworks is considered as one of the most creative ones ever.

Ben shooting at Teide volcano

The collection began in 2010 and was the only one of its kind. Today, others have borrowed from Heine’s brilliance, and started to fashion for themselves, something of a replica. Many schools worldwide started teaching Ben's techniques to their students. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery...

Social Media Buzz

3D Pencil Vs Camera in progress

Heine lit social media ablaze, commanding an impressive 220 thousand “likes” on Facebook. He notes that “Social media helps. It creates each time a mini- buzz for your art.” But Heine is quick to qualify that its effect on sales remains to be seen. Heine receives some, but limited, sponsorship from private entities. He admits that much of his income is generated from the sale of his art work and via art exhibitions. When opportunity allows, he also partners with other artists to create artistic collaborations.

Above the clouds in Tenerife

In a raw, reflective moment, Heine reminds artists not to be careless with their work. “I started naively, when I was young, being very generous and providing high resolution pictures to others. Nowadays if you hand-out high resolution samples of your art, you’re dead as an artist,” he exclaims in a sullen voice. 

Heine also advises that artists give “150%, so that they don’t regret anything” and finally, “to ignore” naysayers who say “you can’t do it.” When all is said and done, Heine hopes his legacy is one of “innovation” and he is remembered as “a creative artist and a champion of peace and love. I hope young people will be inspired by what I’m doing.”

Ben's Babies

Ben Heine and his son Theo

Married, with a new-born son, Theo, Ben reveals, “I am very proud of him. It’s one of the things I am most proud of. I don't even remember how was my life before he was born. He changed me, he changed my life. Being a father is really something you learn slowly. I hope I'm a good father.” And, with a deliberate word of interjection, “And all of my artworks, they are my babies as well, each one has its own character.”

Illustrating "Los Gigantes"

Many a generation of artists look to the drawings of Da Vinci, the paintings of Picasso and Rembrandt, they may yet, one day, look with favour upon Ben Heine. I’ll leave it to art historians to decide the legacy of Pencil Vs Camera, but I can, and will say, it’s sketching its own path to be soulful art to a hungry tech-savvy generation.

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Note: This interview was written by Derefe Chevannes and originally appeared in Cultural Voice, a magazine released in Jamaica and worldwide.

Interview for Tuts+

Ben Heine at the Museum Night Fever in Brussels

Looking at your work across deviantART, Flickr, and your portfolio, you obviously love creating. It must take an incredible amount of imagination to constantly come up with new characters and scenes for your unique works. Have you always had a very active imagination?

I’m an innovative person generally speaking; I always like to do things that have not been tried before. I had to train the way I’m using my imagination over the years to use it at its full potential and not be blocked during the creative process behind every image I make. Most of all, it’s a lot of work and trials and errors. I think it has nothing to do with divine energy or magic. When I’m searching for ideas, I usually start with very small things and it becomes more and more complex when I develop them according to what I want to express.

Where do you get your inspiration for your works and do you ever feel like you’ll run out of ideas?

As I often say, my inspiration mainly comes from the experiences I’m living and the people I meet. I think it is important for artists to be a creative mirror of the society they live in. I’m a rather spontaneous person and I get easily overwhelmed with my emotions. I really try to channel all my passions in my art. Some projects are more powerful than others and that’s still a mystery for me. When I run out of ideas, I simply stop and start something completely different. And my well is full again after a certain time.

You have several outstanding art series but it seems your most popular works are for your ongoing series entitled “Pencil Vs Camera”, is this also your personal favourite or do you have another?

Well, I didn’t expect Pencil Vs Camera would be the most appreciated series in my work. I didn’t know it was so new and different. It has been my favorite concept for many years, but now I really long to do something else. As a creative person, I like to progress and see a distinct evolution in my work. The great thing behind Pencil Vs Camera is that it opens doors to a creative universe with unlimited possibilities and renewed content, but the form is always the same: a combination of photography and drawing. I’ve brought many innovations to the concept to refresh it such as colored drawings on black paper and then giant 3D sketches, but I need something completely different now. I don’t have any other favorite, I think and I hope it’s yet to come.

In your Pencil Vs Camera series you always have such unique and whimsical stories to tell. Are these scenarios born from an idea for a photograph or a sketch?

Both options are possible. Sometimes I do a sketch first at home and I do everything I can to find the right location so that it will work with the sketch. In other cases, I find a spot first and then do the drawing, making sure the sketch will match that specific place. Both techniques require a lot of work and the sketches are always handmade.

What are your tools of the trade? Is there any one thing that makes your job as an artist easier?

I always use simple equipment. The title of my series often describes the main tools I’m using. In Pencil Vs Camera, I use pencils, (with charcoals and pens in some cases), paper and my camera. In Flesh and acrylic, I use acrylic and human models (and my camera again to capture the final results). I also don’t mind retouching my photos to make sure the final result is the way I want.

The life of an artist can be hard, but artists do it because they love their craft. What do you love and hate about being a professional artist, and where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

I’ve made a small graph recently; it describes all the things I usually have to deal with on a daily basis as a professional artist. I love creating and producing art, this is my favorite part, I also love sharing my work (communication, journalism…), but I find it more difficult to handle all the commercial and marketing aspects although these tasks are as important as the other ones. Fortunately, these are things you learn when practicing. Artists have to understand and control all the steps presented in this graph if they want to make a living with their work, or they have to automate or devolve these things to external agencies. Time is money you know.

I see you were born and spent some of your childhood in Ivory Coast, Africa. How much has your hometown affected your work, if at all?

Psychologists often say that the early years of the human development determine the architecture of the adults’ behavior. I’m pretty sure that the fact that I was born and lived so far away from where I’m based now has brought me a certain conception of life. For instance I tend to feel as a citizen of the world, I prefer the universal and I tend to ignore the particular. On the other hand, I’m not sure where my real roots are and I’m always trying to find who I am.

Do you have any other artistic influences that fuel your artistic nature?

Yes, definitely, music and dance. My mother is a dance teacher and I inherited a lot from her. Music is my fuel. Music equals life.

You’re quite a social butterfly on the net. Do you have any suggestions for the reader on how to gain exposure on the web?

I’d suggest artists to always think out of the box and try to get in touch with people who can talk about their work such as journalists, asking them to publish their body of work because there is an original or innovative concept involved. It’s a good way to gain more exposure. Then artists will have to be selective with all the opportunities that will come eventually. Making the right choices is the most difficult.

This interview initially appeared on design.tutsplus.com

Interview for Cult of Mac

Pencil Vs Camera blurs line between reality and whimsy

Ben Heine is a magician. Like David Blaine and Criss Angel before him, he has a special talent for blurring the line between reality and fiction. But instead of utilizing sleight of hand or his indomitable will to delight his audience, Heine keeps it simple by using just a pencil and camera to create his illusions.

Heine’s incredible art series Pencil Vs Camera combines gorgeous landscapes and city scenes with hand-sketched drawings. The otherworldly images that result are both whimsical and intriguing, with a bit of mind-bending magic thrown in for perspective.

“I always try to express what I’m feeling,” Heine told Cult of Mac, noting that most of his inspiration for drawings come “mainly from people around me — friends, family, even strangers — and from every experience I live.”

The 30-year-old artist creates most of his works at his studio in Belgium, using charcoal sticks and graphite pencils to lay the foundational work before going out to snap a picture — though most of the time he has to do some edits to line up shots in post-production.

Burning koalas, horny bunny rabbits and even bland subway stations have fueled the imagination of this Ivory Coast-born artist.

“I’m always trying to find a nice location,” Heine said. “Then if there is a great subject — for instance a funny animal or human doing something unusual — this is nice, but it is not always needed because the drawing will bring a special, original and creative touch most of the time.”

Pencil Vs Camera isn’t Heine’s only popular series: His Digital Circlism project caught our eye two years ago, thanks to this creepy portrait of Steve Jobs. But Heine says the Pencil vs Camera series stretched him as an artist by getting him to learn new ways to enhance his art.

The 3-D drawings, in particular, weren’t the easiest to master. “I had to change the way I’m working,” Heine said. “I had to learn new tools to create the 3-D effects.”

He created more than 70 images during a three-year period for the series, with the final and most challenging pieces swapping photos for huge swaths of canvas drawings to create optical illusions that seem to place the artist inside his anamorphic drawings.

For now, Heine says he’s done with the pencil sketches, but he’s already hard at work on a new project that’s different from anything he’s done before — music. 

“I let my inspiration talk and I don’t ask myself too many questions,” Heine said. “Simple ideas and messages are always the best ones.”

Read more at http://www.cultofmac.com. The above article was written by Buster Hein for Cult of Mac.

Interview for Flickr (*)

Photographer literally draws life into his photos (You can also read the following interview on Flickr Blog or find the above audio interview on Yahoo Screen).

Ben Heine for The Weekly Flickr

In this edition of The Weekly Flickr, we profile Belgian artist and photographer Ben Heine. To call Ben Heine’s photography “cool” or even “eye-catching” is a bit of an understatement. His images are mesmerizing. Ben’s Pencil Vs Camera series perfectly blends illustrations in surprising but clever juxtapositions.

Ben Heine has created a form of art that is truly all his own. Einstein once said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Ben Heine is using art to show that if you can see it and believe it, there are no bounds to creativity! 

Pencil Vs Camera - © Ben Heine

“In my work, I’m really trying to interact with the viewer,” the Belgian artist tells The Weekly Flickr in the accompanying video. “I want to make them laugh or smile, and if I can, surprise people so that he or she doesn’t understand how it’s made. I’m having so much fun and I want them to feel the same.”