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BenHeine

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Deviation Spotlight

Deviation Spotlight

Justice League - Ben Heine Live Performance by BenHeine, film

Deviation Spotlight

Deviation Spotlight

Art and Music by Ben Heine - Art Truc Troc by BenHeine, film

Deviation Spotlight

Artist // Professional // Varied
  • June 12, 1983
  • Belgium
  • Deviant for 17 years
  • My Website
  • He / Him
Badges
Quartz: It's a big honor to be awarded a Quartz badge! (37)
Emerald: It's a great honor to be awarded an Emerald badge! (4)
Heart: Love is in the air, someone is thinking of you! (11)
Gold Coin: Someone thinks you're golden! (4)
Diamond: It's the highest of honors to be awarded an exclusive Diamond badge! (9)
My Bio

A Prolific Self-Taught Multidisciplinary Artist


Ben Heine is a Belgian artist who has produced through the years a huge number of artworks. He is currently best known for his original series "Pencil Vs Camera", "Digital Circlism" and "Flesh and Acrylic". He has a degree in Journalism and is a self-taught person in drawing, digital photography and music (piano and drums). His graphic creations have been exhibited widely in Europe and more recently in Asia. His favorite art movements are Surrealism, Pop Art, Geometric Abstraction, Expressionism and Social Realism. He started creating electronic music in 2011. A documentary about his work was released in 2012. Ben is married to Marta and their son Theodor was born in August 2012.


A Belgian Boy Born in Ivory Coast With an Interest in Drawing


Ben was born in 1983 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he spent the first seven years of his life, with his parents and three sisters. The whole family relocated in Brussels, Belgium, in 1990. His father was a commercial engineer and his mother a choreographer and a dance teacher. As a young boy, Heine was attracted by the things young men are happy to explore such as sport, music and friends. Heine started drawing at 11 year old and quickly understood that graphic art was a powerful tool of communication and expression. At that time until recently, his curiosity for drawing was his keenest interest.


Academic Background and Love for Languages, Art and Music


Heine undertook studies in different countries, including Ivory Coast, Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands. Ben has a diploma in Journalism completed with distinction at IHECS school of Journalism in Brussels. He also studied History of Art, Painting and Sculpture at Hastings College of Arts & Technology in the UK and at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Throughout his academic training, he was also able to learn several music instruments (drums and piano) and several languages. Besides perfectly speaking French and English, the artist is quite fluent in Dutch and Polish and speaks some bits of Spanish and Russian.


A Popular Artist With an International Mindset


Hundreds of millions of people have seen Heine’s creations. He has exhibited and published his artworks all over the world since 2006. The artist presented his pieces of art in countless fairs and galleries in Belgium, South Korea, the UK, Romania, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, the US, Turkey, Brazil, and Spain. His pictorial works have been published in some of the most famous newspapers and magazines (see "Press" and "Exhibitions" for more info). Moreover, Heine has a huge presence on the Internet as well, and his works continually pop here and there on social media and online news outlets, making him one of the most watched artists on the web today. Ben is an enthusiastic traveller, he has visited hundreds of cities and countries, each one of them being a huge source of inspiration for his creative projects.


Pencil Vs Camera: When Imagination Meets Reality


Pencil Vs Camera is an original visual concept invented and popularized by Ben Heine in April 2010. It is the artist’s special trademark and one of the most creative art concepts of the 21st century that has influenced a big number of other creators. Pencil Vs Camera blends drawing and photography in a unique way. The idea was the result of a long artistic exploration and a logic outcome of Ben's evolution: "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." ("Cultural Voices" June 2014). Ben’s hand is always visible because it represents the connection between the viewer, the artist and the artwork. In these images, everything seems possible and Ben likes to tell a story and convey timeless messages using imagination, illusion, poetry and surrealism. Starting with simple sketches, Ben brought major innovations to the concept in 2012 and 2013, adding colors and black paper or increasing the drawings’ size (more info in the comprehensive chronological bio below). Since 2012, several smartphone applications emulate Heine’s Pencil Vs Camera’s style. Many creators have borrowed from Heine’s brilliance and started to fashion for themselves, something of a replica. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. (see "Interviews" for more info)


Flesh and Acrylic: Humans Disappearing in Abstract Paintings


This is a project Heine started in 2011. In this series, Heine creates abstract acrylic paintings on large wooden panels. The artist blends the model (a living person) with the background. The particularity of the project resides in the fact that a living person is integrated in the artwork and is part of the whole composition. Heine wants the model to become almost invisible. The end result is often a very colorful, wild and eye-catching creation. When the painting is finished, Heine takes pictures of it so that they can be exhibited later on. The artist has made several public live performances featuring his Flesh and Acrylic concept (see references in the comprehensive chronological bio below) and he often comes dressed with hand-painted acrylic outfits in public events or exhibitions. In 2013, Ben started the "Black Stickers" series, a variation of "Flesh and Acrylic".


Thousands of Other Photos and Drawings


Heine has been interested in painting and drawing since he was a child. He eventually added photography to his repertoire because it empowers him to create images that are more eye-catching, dramatic, precise, and realistic than most paintings or illustrations. Today, Heine is equal parts illustrator and photographer, creating commissioned works for clients such as Samsung, McCann Erickson, Diesel and others, while still making time for personal projects. He made thousands of drawings and took even more photos in various destinations around the world. Many of Ben’s photos look like drawings.


There are other less known series in Ben’s photographic work such as the "Double Landscapes", "Wild Animals Downtown" or "Black Stickers" pictures, among other ideas. When editing his pictures, Ben removes all the imperfections and improves the lights, tones, colors and composition. All the edits Ben makes are only meant to express a specific message and he wants to preserve the essence and authenticity of the original shot. These are the cameras and lenses Ben currently uses: Canon: Canon EOS Mark II. Canon lens EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM. Canon lens EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM. Samsung: Samsung NX10, NX11, NX20, NX200. Samsung lens 50-200mm f 4.0-5.6 ois. Samsung ifunction lens 20-50mm f 3.5-5.6. LG G2 smartphone camera. Sony Xperia Z1 smartphone camera.


Digital Circlism: Portraits of Celebrities Made with Circles


This project started in 2010. In this series, Heine makes portraits of celebrities (mainly singers and musicians) with digital tools by using only flat circles. Heine defines it as a synthesis of Pop Art (art including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc.) and Pointillism (painting technique that uses small, distinct dots of pure color). Through the use of graphic softwares and a whole lot of creativity, Ben recreates iconic faces from history and pop culture with circles of various sizes and colors, in order to give them a dynamic and 3-dimensional appearance. Each portrait requires between 100 to 180 hours of work to be completed. The artist explained his workflow in an interview for Adobe Photoshop. Many of Ben's circle portraits have unfortunately been copied, stolen and plagiarized in various countries around the globe.


Music Creation: A Challenge Like No Others


An aspiring musician with an unmolested love for electronic music, Heine plays drums and the piano and started sharing his creative sounds for the first time in November 2011. "Music is more powerful", a startling confession for an artist whose claim to fame is a non-musical endeavor. His love for music marries well with his love for graphic art, "It complements my graphic work and it helps me to grow as a graphic artist too" Ben says. ("Cultural Voices", June 2014). Ben owns a professional studio since 2012. He uses Novation and Akai midi/audio synthesizers and plays drums with an electronic Roland drum kit. He edits all his sounds in Ableton Live. He is currently mainly interested in progressive house. In 2014, Ben started to collaborate with other musicians and singers.


Samsung Imagelogger


In 2010, Ben was one of the first photographers to become an official Samsung Camera "Imagelogger". In this context, Ben had the opportunity to experience and shoot with Samsung latest cameras and lenses between 2010 and 2013 (in particular the Samsung NX10, NX11, NX20, NX200 and Galaxy NX cameras). Samsung also sponsored his promotional brochures in 2011, his collective exhibition at Samsung D’light in 2010, his project with the Samsung Note 10.1 in Lisbon in 2012 and his solo exhibition at "Hyehwa Art Center" in Seoul later in 2013.


Political Art


Heine started putting pencil to paper when he was only eleven years of age. Traditionally trained in journalism and communications at the renowned IHECS School, Heine tried his hand at political cartoons. This brief encounter was far less charitable to him than he had hoped. 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 in 2009, vowing never to return.


Reach Out to Ben Heine


Apart from Heine’s personal website and Facebook page, the artist is also reachable through Instagram, Flickr, SoundCloud, Twitter, deviantART, Google +, Blogger and YouTube.


Full chronological biography here: bit.ly/ben-heine-comprehensive…


Favourite Visual Artist
Andy Warhol
Favourite Movies
Schindler's List
Favourite Bands / Musical Artists
Plastikman
Favourite Writers
Peter S. Quinn, Charles Baudelaire, Mark Prime, Rimbaud
Favourite Games
Chess
Tools of the Trade
Smile
Other Interests
Art, nature, people, love
Undoubtedly one of the most prolific, innovative, and exciting artists exhibiting their work on deviantART has to be the amazing `BenHeine.   Artist on Fire:   The Creative Juggernaut that is BenHeine (https://www.deviantart.com/benheine)  .techgnotic (https://www.deviantart.com/techgnotic)  by techgnotic (https://www.deviantart.com/techgnotic)  Wed Jan 18, 2011, 7:00 PM Undoubtedly one of the most prolific, innovative, and exciting artists  exhibiting their work on deviantART has to be the amazing BenHeine (https://www.deviantart.com/benheine). In terms of sheer creativity and the true spirit of art as human expression that knows no bounds,  he is currently with few peers. His unique visual creations have been featured in newspapers, magazines  and other
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Hello everyone, I'm very happy to announce that prints and posters of my best photos and designs (selection below) are now available for the first time on DA at affordable prices and in many different sizes. I hope you can buy some of my works as gifts for your friends or family or simply to decorate your room/house. You will love them. :thumb269325241: :thumb386828691: :thumb266785740: :thumb184875138: :thumb155504759: :thumb154331003: :thumb176422411: :thumb170350243: :thumb205403643: :thumb162295723: :thumb160836297: :thumb203876418: :thumb289415328: :thumb312063095: :thumb290283069: :thumb181602625: :thumb272661074: :thumb293452269:
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Undoubtedly one of the most prolific, innovative, and exciting artists exhibiting their work on deviantART has to be the amazing `BenHeine.   Artist on Fire:   The Creative Juggernaut that is BenHeine (https://www.deviantart.com/benheine)  .techgnotic (https://www.deviantart.com/techgnotic)  by techgnotic (https://www.deviantart.com/techgnotic)  Wed Jan 18, 2011, 7:00 PM Undoubtedly one of the most prolific, innovative, and exciting artists  exhibiting their work on deviantART has to be the amazing BenHeine (https://www.deviantart.com/benheine). In terms of sheer creativity and the true spirit of art as human expression that knows no bounds,  he is currently with few peers. His unique visual creations have been featured in newspapers, magazines  and other
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Profile Comments 19.4K

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...thank you soooo much!... :heart:

Guidance to Understanding

Hello Ben Heine, just want to say that you incredible artist and to wish you a great weekend:)I'm following you on DA from 2010 and your art is amazing:) . Each project is interesting and very special. Thank you for sharing your talent with us:)

Pencil Vs Camera - 70
Eminem

Happy Birthday. You are sociable, popular, and insatiably curious. You have writing and/or speaking skills and enjoy expressing yourself. At the same time, others find you an interesting conversationalist. Moodiness and restlessness come when you are not intellectually stimulated or on the move. Even so, it would be wise to slow down from time to time in order to get in touch with your deeper needs and intuition.Famous people born today: Anne Frank, George Herbert Walker Bush, Charles Kingsley, Jason Mewes, Henry Scott Tuke, Jim Nabors, Dave Berg, Dave Franco, Dakota Morton, Anna Margaret, Laura Jones, & fellow deviants daekazu& thrumyeye

Thank you for the diamond budge :)

Thank you for the diamond badge. It is much appreciated.

Hey Liar, you can stop pretending now. The trick is exposed.

anyone to take ANYTHING in his gallery and run it through this.


Maybe at some point you used to be an artist, but now you're a thief and a fraud.

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