Often times my work is more about a conversation with my anxieties. I have a deep, conflicting relationship with concepts of existentialism. The following works reflect abstract ideas that I simply don’t have words for.
Sketch of a painting I'm thinking about. I think as adults, we have our own ambitions about living on the moon. However, once we have children, we can only yearn to be able to live on the moon with them.
These are 5 out of 12 images I did while processing the necessity of healing from life lessons. Heartbreak is prevalent throughout all the levels of tragedies in our lives. At times, the mourning period feels forced-- I never really want my wounds to heal because I feel they're the last of the love I carried for that "thing". The process feels like gold pouring into my gapping heart and I can only scream as it sears through my veins. It hurts to heal. It hurts that it has to happen.
When I am angry and frustrated with the world (politics, wild fires, injustice, etc.) I seem to be drawn to drawing raptors. The first one is today's sketch, the other two are from former days.
Blackwing pencil and woodless B4 pencil on Canson sketch paper.
I try to do a couple of birds a week (obviously don't post them all). This is based on an on-line photo reference drawn with a "soft" Palomino Blackwing pencil and a 4B Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Progress woodless pencil. Hence the dark velvety black.
More ballpoint pen experiments. This was trying to "blend" colors, using ball point pens in a similar way to colored pencils. I found Layering evenly to be pretty difficult, esp with the pens blotching and very very limited burnishing. The interesting thing is that the paper doesn't seem to get "tired" the way it does with pencils. This is just cheap printer card stock.
My first ballpoint pen person. This was a lot more time consuming than I expected, but I'm glad I hung in there and finally finished it. The reference for the drawing was a Getty Image.
Architectural subjects are not my penchant....but this is a pen line drawing of our house which I did a few weeks ago near the beginning of the "stay at home" phase of our lives. Seemed a fitting subject. Just a couple of micron pens on a smooth surfaced paper.
There are many reference photos for iguanas on the internet. This drawing relies on three difference reference images. The drawing was done with a micron .005 pen and then coloring added with pencils. He was a lot of fun....I think there may be more iguanas or other lizards and reptiles in my future!
I've been so impressed with the ball point pen art that I have seen on this site, that I decided to give it a try. This is a Betta fish (Siamese fighting fish) done in red, blue, and purple ball point pens. Obviously, I have much to learn....but it was great fun and I have ordered some more colors since I plan on experimenting more. I've enclosed a photo of the work in progress and the various reference photos I used. The colors are more true to the final scan than in the flash photo of my drawing table.
For this one, I used the wisp character from the mobile game, "Legendary Game of Heroes". Every time the word 'wisp' is mentioned, I think of this character!
