For most people, LEGO bricks and minifigs are child’s play, but some artists have revolutionized LEGO art. These modern artists have moved from traditional art media like pencil, watercolors, charcoal, or clay to LEGO bricks.
The few artists using LEGOs have built a career from their childhood fascination. They have moved away from the confines of LEGO brick manuals to create lifelike and fantastic sculptures and artworks. Some famous LEGO artists include Nathan Sawaya, Mariann Asanuma, Mike Doyle, and Sean Kenney.
Every LEGO artist focuses on their style and inspiration. Sean Kenney weaves his love of nature and a childhood fascination with LEGOs into extraordinary nature sculptures built entirely from LEGOs. Sean has produced hundreds of masterpieces for almost two decades using millions of LEGO bricks.
Sean’s LEGO sculptures range from portraits and skyscrapers to incredible animal sculptures that capture the beauty of nature.
Sean Kenney’s LEGO inspiration
Sean Kenney has been a LEGO enthusiast since he was a kid. He became better at it as he grew, and his passion for creative arts grew. Sean later joined Rutgers University to study visual arts. After graduating, he became a graphic designer, and some of his works featured LEGO bricks.
The environment around him greatly influenced him. Some of his first works featured the Empire State Building and Greenwich Village, among other famous sights in New York. A significant milestone in his LEGO art came when a botanical garden in Iowa asked him to make replicas of some of its plants and flowers. From then on, he shifted his focus to nature, and his works became more popular.
Over time, other institutions across the Midwest began commissioning him to make LEGO sculptures of some of their animals; he’s never looked back. Today, he makes spectacular exhibits, children’s books, portraiture, and commissioned LEGO artwork.
What does Sean build with LEGOs?
LEGO enthusiasts know it’s difficult to mimic nature out of LEGO bricks. But that’s the challenge that Sean and his team have to overcome, and they have done a fantastic job at it. Over the years, he has made dozens of LEGO animal recreations using millions of LEGO bricks, including butterflies, hummingbirds, lions, polar bears, snow leopards, and more. He even has a peacock LEGO sculpture with a 7-foot span of feathers!
“When we are doing huge sculptures, the best way to do it is with a lot of basic bricks, and that’s why many large models use big chunky rectangles. The problem is when you get up into the face itself, those chunky rectangles are too chunky to get the subtlety you need,” Sean says.
To make the finishing touches, he uses round pieces, slopes, wheels, and doors, among other pieces. He says his goal is to get the details right without changing the bigger picture and the overall visual effect. He tries not to overuse these rounded and slope pieces because it will upset the harmony of the sculpture.
“Having a high-res head on a low-res body; it’s almost like you had a 1080 P head on a pixel body. I think the result is that we create something that, when you look at it, seems so simple, and hopefully, you look at it and think, that’s not complicated. That’s pretty easy,” he says. “Sometimes it’s hard to make something look simple.”
Sean recalls when a woman at one of his shows jumped back on seeing his snow leopard LEGO sculpture. She thought it was real. He says it’s a joy for an artist to know he got the details right.
The process of Sean’s LEGO artwork
Sean collaborates with other artists, and they team up in teams of two or three. Most sculptures start as sketches on paper before moving to graph paper or computer models.
We gather source photography and other information online,” he says. “Sometimes we watch YouTube videos to see the subject in action.”
They then use these blueprints as a benchmark to build a prototype. Once they have a prototype they love, they move on to the real thing. One sculpture takes thousands of LEGO bricks and several months to complete. And some LEGO sculptures can take up to nine months. For instance, a lion took 48,248 bricks to build.
Inspiring kids through LEGO art
Sean has also used this platform to keep the conversation about conservation going. He hopes to educate the public about the importance of nature by capturing its essence.
Today, his pieces capture audiences across the globe because of their message and his mastery of LEGO bricks. His Nature Pop Zoo exhibitions continue to captivate and inspire nature lovers and kids who love LEGO art.
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