NE China students draw famous martial artist in the snow
By Wang Zhen
2015-12-04
What can snow be used for? Well, the most likely answer would probably be for making a snowman or for snowball fights. But, two university students in Jilin province have come up with an unconventional use for the stuff: making a portrait of the famed kung fu movie actor, Bruce Lee.
Li Yafeng and Wei Xudong, two art students at Beihua University in Jilin city, decided on impulse to draw a portrait of Bruce Lee on snow as it fell on the playground.
"We were just wondering what we could do. I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee and his kung fu and movies," so he suggested to Wei, his roommate, that they make a drawing.
They had also seen a recent video clip where an old man was stamping on snow to make an image, so they quickly put their idea into action, and went looking for a site and found the playground deserted.
Normally, drawing a Bruce Lee portrait would be a piece of cake for art students, but using snow was an entirely different matter.
First, they tried the stamping method that they'd seen the video clip, but couldn't get the outline of his face because the snow wasn't thick enough. So, they came up with the idea of using an engraving -- meaning clearing away the snow down to the cement court.
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Bruce Lee, through the eyes of Li Yafeng and Wei Xudong, who made it on Dec 1.[Photo provided to xwh.cn] |
And, because of the size of their imagined portrait, they needed a rough sketch first, so they asked a classmate to use a laser pointer to draw the sketch on the snow, with the two of them following the indicator. The problem was that, as the laser boy stood up above on a dorm balcony to do his work, he was shivering so much in the freezing temperature that he began to scribble.
That was a problem, but it didn't stop the pair and they finally came up with a not-exactly-genius idea of breaking the sketch into grids, then transferring them to the court at a scale of 1:100, and drew the picture with sticks. They also removed the snow to reveal the concrete in grids.
And 2-hours of work produced a Bruce Lee portrait which made them excited and their caught other people's attention. Someone even went up to the top of a building to photograph it as a black and white engraving.
Wei concludes with a smile, "We were busy drawing the profile and attracted a lot of students who were curious and one guy asked us why we were sweeping snow on such a snowy day."
The pair are quite modest about their work, noting, "it deserves a 6.5 out of 10 at the most."
In any case, it was quickly covered by more snow, but the pair's effort got a good comment from their professor, Wei Jianxun, dean of the sculpture department, who said that the two students are obviously men of action because he had just mentioned using snow to create some work only a few days ago.
"They did it in a bad weather which affects the quality, of course, and next time we may work together to make a better piece."
