Erich Heckel - Characters: Research

In my project I will be creating characters for my movie. In this research I want focus on style of creating characters. I chose Erich Heckel to look at. 

Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker born in 1883 in Dobeln. He was a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brucke. He was known for his painting and woodcuts of nudes and landscapes, however I want to focus on his hand printed characters. He started create portraits in 1910 after he met his cuter wife. During the war his works featured spiritual isolation and melancholy. He made a lot of prints in time of his career. Most of them were self-printed. 

My major project is related to life of my grandmother. That’s why I choose this picture first. Head of Violinist by E. Heckel is a woodcut portrait. As we can see artist used only basic shapes to get us an idea of character. For example, we associate old face with wrinkles on whole face, however Heckel decided to put wrinkles only on forehead to get us idea of age of this character. Next thing is that contour of the face is a little bit deformed which tells us that face is not young and smooth. To create this character author uses lines of different thicknesses and doesn’t give us many details. 

Erich Heckel, Kopf des Geigers, woodcut on heavy wove paper, 1907

The second image is Girl by the Sea. I choose this image because she reminds me of teacher. I am going to create poster about my grandma’s work time and she was a teacher and school director. She taught in different times and Erich Heckel’s works share a somber mood and uncertainty. I want to keep my works in same aesthetic and similar style. Also i like shading in this collection. As we can see on two prints below, Heckel uses thick lines to create shadows on face and black shapes to create depth (for example on hair or landscape behind the character). 

Erich Heck, Madchen am Meer, 1918

The last work I chose is portrait of Bildnis E.H.. In this portrait we can observe straighter and thicker lines. This work is more clear then the first one. The background isn’t melancholic but if we look close on the face we can see how sad this character is. Here we can also observ using of simple shapes. For example hair, plant and shirt are just black shape. The most intresting part is a face. Rest is keeping simple so we can focus on what is important - face. Heckel uses cropping and narrow, vertical format which heighten the feelings of oppression. The figures are compressed into a tight space which manipulate this space. 

Erich Heckel, Bildnis E. H., 1917

In my project I want to experiment with this style of creating shadows. This research helped my understand how to draw faces and characters using only simple shapes. Also I want to experiment with using two colours or using colours but in dark shades. 

References:

Hess, H., 2011. MoMA | The Collection | Erich Heckel (German, 1883–1970). [online] MoMA.org. Available at: <https://www.moma.org/s/ge/collection_ge/artist/artist_id-2569.html> [Accessed 10 February 2021].

Artnet.com. 2021. Erich Heckel | artnet | Page 2. [online] Available at: <http://www.artnet.com/artists/erich-heckel/2?type=prints-and-multiples> [Accessed 10 February 2021].