Lego Art

De meesten onder ons hebben als kind nog met Lego gespeeld. Maar wist je dat Lego ook voor volwassenen heel wat creatieve mogelijkheden biedt?

Ontdek er hieronder enkele van!

 

Most of us have played with Lego as a kid. But did you know that Lego also offers a lot of creative possibilities for adults?

Discover a few of them below!

 

 

 

In mijn vorige artikel sprak ik al over NetGalley, een Engelstalige website waar je gratis e-boeken kan lezen in ruil voor een eerlijke recensie. Intussen heb ik al enkele boeken gelezen en er staan er nog heel wat op mijn verlanglijstje. Sommigen zullen op deze blog aan bod komen, anderen niet. Maar over allen vind je wel steeds mijn mening terug op Goodreads en Hebban.

Ook van boeken uit mijn eigen kast zal je op bovenstaande websites altijd een recensie terugvinden. Nu ik op Goodreads omgeven ben door vrienden die van (bijna) elk boek dat ze lezen een recensie schrijven, ben ik zelf immers ook meer geneigd om deze goede gewoonte te onderhouden ;-)

 

In my previous article I already spoke of NetGalley, a website where you can read English books for free in exchange for an honest review. In the meantime I already read a few books and there are a lot more waiting on my wishlist. Some will be featured on this blog, others won't. But my opinion about all of those books can always be found on Goodreads and Hebban.

You'll also always find a review of books of my own bookshelf on the above websites. Because now that I'm surrounded by friends on Goodreads who write reviews of (almost) every book they read, I'm way more inclined to maintain this good habit ;-)

 

 

Terug naar Lego.

En naar twee boekjes die op NetGalley mijn aandacht trokken.

 

Back to Lego.

And to two books that caught my attention on NetGalley.

 

Goodreads / Hebban

 

 

Vooral de volgende zin uit de achterflaptekst maakte mij nieuwsgierig: "LEGO Small Parts is a look at the humorous and all-too human world of the LEGO minifigure."

Of het mij bevallen is? Absoluut!

Een klein maar fijn en bovenal humoristisch boekje dat ik met 4* waardeerde.
Mijn recensie:

 

Especially the following sentence from the back cover made me curious: "LEGO Small Parts is a look at the humorous and all-too human world of the LEGO minifigure."

Did I like it? Absolutely!
A small but nice and above all humorous book that I rated with 4*.
My review:

If you ask people: "When you hear 'Lego', what's the first thing that comes to mind?"

Probably "building things" is the most popular and widely given answer you will find

 

What's less known is that Lego-characters have absolutely a will of their own

And turn out to have a great sense of humour, once their thoughts are shown

 

Aled Lewis knows all about that.

Through this small book of 64 pages he gives us an insight into what's going on in the heads of those funny yellow characters who live in the world of Lego.

 

Every page displays a joke, most of the times through 1 panel but sometimes also through 4 panels.

The settings are very varied: from hairdresser to surgery room, from prehistory to aliens, from prison to filmset, …

Some jokes are rather predictable, but most of them are really original.

 

Conclusion: Refreshing and funny point of view on the world of Lego.

 

 

Goodreads / Hebban

Dat Lego niet alleen gebruikt kan worden om blokjes op elkaar te stapelen, maar dat je er ook een soort van mixed media-schilderijtjes van kan maken, bewijst dit boekje.

Hoewel er soms originele foto's in staan, bleef ik toch wat op mijn honger zitten, waardoor ik jammer genoeg slechts 2* gaf.

Dat er wel potentieel zit in dit boek kan je nalezen in mijn recensie:

 

This booklet proves that Lego can not only be used to stack blocks on top of each other, but that you can make some kind of mixed media scenes with them as well.
Although it sometimes contains original pictures, I had the feeling that there was something missing. So unfortunately I gave it only 2*.
But, as you can read in my review, I dó believe there is potential in this book.

 

Some people think playing with Lego is only a children's activity

That this is absolutely not true you can discover here with me

 

Brightly colored still lifes of everyday scenes are shown in this book

Are they all original and beautiful? Well, let's take a look*

 

*Not actually a real look because photographs may not be reproduced here, but as a matter of speaking ;-)

 

 

Art exists in many forms.

Most people know the regular ones like painting, sculpture, …

But it can be really enthralling when variations on those forms are seeing the light.

 

In this colorful book you're immersed during 144 pages in the world of Lego.

If you expect to see images with Lego-bricks stacked on top of each other, you'll be disappointed.

The approach is totally different, as in: take a lot of Lego-bricks of all imaginable colors and forms, imagine a real life situation and try to depict that scene just laying down everyday objects and Lego-bricks quite randomly. You could actually call it 'mixed media with Lego-bricks'.

 

Some of the results are really nice, others are rather simple.

Fact is that whether you use Lego or any other colorful material (f.e. little pieces of paper), it would almost be the same.

Taking all this in consideration, this book could appeal to some people, but others will feel like there's something missing. Especially comparing to other Lego art.

 

Imho the idea behind this book would come out much better if the best images (flower bouquet, pond, beach, flashlight, …) were used to illustrate a story (in rhyme?). That way the book would not only lean on the images, but on the written text as well. This would allow to create a more unified result rather than a random hodgepodge of images that sometimes have nothing to do with each other and that are not always equally original.

 

Conclusion: This book doesn't live entirely up to the expectations of people who search for really original Lego art, but it has a lot of potential that could come into its own with some adjustments.

 

 

Bij die 'andere Lego kunst' waar ik in de laatste recensie naar verwijs, denk ik in de eerste plaats aan Nathan Sawaya, één van mijn (vele) favoriete artiesten.
Hij gaf zijn carrière als advocaat op om fulltime met Legoblokjes bezig te zijn. Dat dit absoluut de juiste keuze bleek te zijn, kan je in volgend filmpje zien!

When I refer to 'other Lego art' in the last review, I think in the first place of Nathan Sawaya, one of my (many) favourite artists.

He gave up his career as a lawyer to work full-time with Lego-bricks. As you can see in the following interview this definitely turned out to be the right choice!