Silas Merlin, Pastel Portrait Artist

Silas with one of his sculptures in his studio

Silas Merlin is a delightful little boy in Second Life. (Of course in real life he's grown and a professional artist). He was a resident at Avalon and had his marvelous pastel portraits up in an old barn. Walking around to view his pastels portraits of people in a Renaissance fair, I felt I was transported to a different time and place. He captured their costumes, their expressions, their delight that can be found in a festive environment.

Biography

Silas Merlin also known as Jean-François Le Saint in real life was born 1971 in Brittany, France. He has been a Master Pastelist (Maître Pastelliste) of the Pastel Society of France (Société des Pastellistes de France) since 2009. (List of the Maîtres Pastellistes on the Society's website: http://pastellistesdefrance.com/galeries/galeries-maitres-pastellistes.

Jean-François Le Saint website : http://lesaint.fr

Artist Statement

Soft pastels have been my primary medium since 1990 when I was in art school in Paris.

The first thing I did in Second Life when I arrived in 2007 was to draw commissioned portraits of avatars in pastels.

Silas does commissioned works of portraits of avatars.
Contact Silas Merlin for more information.

I took a long break from this virtual world, always meaning to come back, and eventually I did, in May 2014.

I came back with the idea to recreate a real life exhibition I had at the time, and make a machinima of a visit of the exhibition. You can view it there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-98KrsjszDA

I am now teaching myself to sculpt for Second Life, and having 3d printing in mind.













Below is my interview with Silas about his beginning but especially how Second life affected his life as a
real life artist.

The Interview

What kind of artist are you? and what medium do you work in?
Soft pastels are my primary medium, and I usually do figurative work.

What is your process? Do you work from photos? Do you work from life? How do you approach your art?
I work mostly in my workshop (studio?), traveling back in space and time with the hundreds of thousands of photo references I take at traditional or medieval festivals here in Brittany where many such festivals take place. I do enjoy sketching from life, but I prefer the quiet of my studio and the company of my cats. Sometimes I will sketch portraits from life at an event. I also start some commissioned portraits from life and finish them later in my own studio.

Silas captures the spirit of a festival in
these portraits of the young in their costumes

Did you have any formal training in art? If so, what university? If not did you take workshops or learned from books?
I attended a graphic arts school called Ecole Maryse Eloy in Paris. It was not about learning drawing or painting techniques, so I taught myself.

Festivals provides an opportunityfor Silas to draw portraits from life.

Did you draw as a child? and what did you draw?
Yes, of course. I think everyone draws as a child but most people just stop, some don't.

I remember drawing stick men fighting imaginary battles, then copying Belgian comic strips characters. By middle school I was drawing faces, faces all the time, either imaginary, or caricatures of my teachers. I would draw during class too. I remember one history teacher who kept asking me questions to check to see if I was following. Finally she stopped and didn't mind my drawing during her lectures.

Who influenced you to be an artist? A family member, a teacher....
I think maybe the universe conspired to make it so. The day I consciously stopped looking for other possibilities, and decided to devote my life to art, I suddenly had a reason to live.

Silas' process of painting a portrait
in pastels.

What is your reason to exhibit in Second Life? and what is your experience had been? Any positive or negative? And has exhibiting in SL affected your RL art?
Oh, I didn't know I needed a reason to exhibit in Second Life. It just makes sense. Second Life is warm and cozy, I want to be here. Importing my real life work into Second Life and rezzing it on a virtual wall gives me a new perspective on it. By contrast sticking it on a website or posting on social networks does not add anything or give me new insight to my paintings.

Artwork comes into being in the virtual world, (especially when you don't use the full bright lighting feature in Second Life), it is affected by the day cycle, local lights that can be coloured, projectors cast shadows...

In Second Life I can receive visitors to my gallery, chat with them in a relaxed way and enjoy it. In Real Life I'd rather not do that.

The other thing that SL changes is that now I can adapt my drawings in 3d, making sculptures out of my pastels. Other artists chose to animate their work, give it sound, visual effect... and I feel I could teach myself to do these things if that were what I really wanted to do.