Drawing, Artisan, Drawing, Illustration, Mixed Media, Realism, Graphite, Pen & Ink, Wildlife, Birds, Nature
My art is a reflection of the environment. The images I create are a tribute to the plants, animals and architecture that I find in my surroundings and they, in turn, supply me with the enthusiasm and motivation I need to continue drawing.
Initially, all of my drawings were done in pen and ink by stippling. Stippling is an illustration technique where dots of varying sizes, and the density of those dots are used to provide 'value' (the degree of light or shade) in a drawing. The drawing may be either black and white or colour. Obviously, when a drawing has no colour the scale of value is critical - scale of value refers to the range of light and dark from deepest shadow to brightest light. In stippling, I can achieve a greater scale of value and more detail by using a large drawing surface (i.e. 11" x 16") and very small dots. The large drawings of wildlife take between 100-200 hours to complete. These are 11" x 16" images drawn with .18 - .30 size rapidograph nibs and are comprised of many millions of dots. And that, in a nutshell, is why I now do half my drawings in graphite (pencil and stick).