Artist Turns Shadows Of Everyday Objects Into Ingenious Illustrations
Some people see a shadow on the wall. Vincent Bal sees a story waiting to be finished.
A filmmaker’s eye for the frame. The Belgian director and illustrator turns the shadows of everyday objects into witty, self-contained scenes, and his instinct for composition shows in every one. A rubber duck throws a shadow, and Bal draws it into a burglar sneaking off with a bag of loot. A green bottle stretches across the page and becomes a moonlit highway. What could have been a party trick reads instead like the work of someone who understands light, negative space, and comic timing.
Ordinary objects, extraordinary shadow art. That’s the quiet genius of it. A pastry becomes a scowling owl, a car charger turns into a steaming pot with a chef fussing over it, a colander scatters light into a disco floor. Bal isn’t illustrating the object in front of him; he’s illustrating what its shadow secretly wants to be. The everyday thing stays exactly what it is, and the drawing does all the imagining.
It started with a cup of tea. Bal was working on a script when he noticed the shadow his teacup cast on a sheet of paper. A few pen strokes later it was an elephant. He photographed it, posted it, and watched it travel further than anything he’d made for the screen. He’s been drawing a shadow a day ever since. Scroll down and you’ll see why people can’t look away.
