French Artist Contrasts Living Creatures With Antique Objects In His Intricate Drawings

Meet Steeven Salvat, a French artist, who perfectly blends the animate with the inanimate. His drawings are part animal and part intricate mechanisms/vintage items. His crustacean and bird series are testimony to his prowess of meticulously crafting subjects that leave the viewers simply awestruck.

Salvat’s crustacean series is nothing less than biological studies of yore, drawn with clarity and exactitude. Little wonder he has titled this series as ‘Mechanical/Biological [Crustacean Study]. It features crabs, lobsters, and crayfish in incredible details, especially the intricate clockwork mechanisms. He had used a 0.13-millimeter Rotring technical drawing pen to draw his entire 10-piece crustacean collection.

Salvat’s Perchés project is his latest. In this, he combines birds with vintage or antique objects. His works show different birds perching on objects that have now become obsolete, such as an owl sitting atop a typewriter or a robin fluttering over a vintage sewing machine and many other such combinations. For this, he worked with watercolor on pastel paper and then drew with 0.13-millimeter Rotring drawing pen and China ink.

Speaking to Colossal, Salvat says, “I wanted to highlight the contrasts between lightness and brutality, the fragility of nature and immortality of objects.” Certainly, there could not have been a better way to showcase such contrasts. On his website he states, “I create artworks with a hatching technique, using black ink, Rotring pens, a lot of lines and hundreds of hours. I also draw in collaboration with Théo Jan, follow our work on the Steev & Jan page….”

If you want to own his works, he has collaborated with a Parisian studio, called Sergeant Paper, to edit five drawings from his Perchés series in a signed and numbered edition of 100. These are available in his online shop. It’s not surprising that he’s making his presence felt on social media.

Steeven Salvat: Website | Facebook | Instagram

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