Inktober Week 4

Here are days 23-29 in no particular order.

Thursday Thoughts: Drawing Compared to Painting

Ben Shahn

“One cannot, I think, crowd into drawings a really towering content of feeling. Drawings may be small intimate revelations; they may be witty or biting , they may be fragmentary glimpses of great feeling or awesome situation, but I feel that the immense idea asks for a full orchestration of color, depth, texture, and form.” ~Ben Shahn, The Biography of a Painting

 

Thursday Thoughts: Quote from Ben Shahn

The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn

For the next few weeks I’d like to quote Ben Shahn’s book, The Shape of Content, for my Thursday Thoughts. I recently re-read Shahn’s book and found almost every word to be lucid and insightful. The book is actually a collection of essays and lectures and I will post one or two quotes from each chapter. I would highly recommend this book for any artist and it is on Amazon for less than $15.

“It has become obvious that art itself in America is without what might be called a natural environment. Art and artists often exist within a public climate that is either indifferent or hostile to their profession. Or otherwise they may concentrate within small colonies wherein they find a sort of self-protection and self-affirmation. The art colonies are severely limited in the variety of experience and opinion which they can contribute to art. They become almost monastic in the degree of their withdrawal from common society; and thus their art product becomes increasingly ingrown, tapping less and less the vital streams of common experience, rejecting more and more the human imperatives which have propelled and inspired art in past times.” ~Ben Shahn, Artists in Colleges

 

Inktober Week 3

Here are days 15-22 in no particular order.

Sneak peak of new drawing: Babel

This is part of an old drawing from early 2014 which I wasn’t satisfied with and which has been tucked way in an unused corner of my studio. Recently I’ve developed some new techniques involving graphite over ink and I thought I’d try to breath some new life into this drawing. The working title is Babel.

Part of Babel, a 40″x10″ drawing. Ink, gouache, and graphite on illustration board.

Inktober Week 2

Here are days 8-14 in no particular order. 

Jacob Rowan – Jackson, Mississippi

Check out my interview on 365 artists/365 days

365 Artists | 365 Days

Chorus, ink on watercolor board, 23.5”x16.5” 2015

Briefly describe the work you do. 

I make drawings in response to what I read. They are not illustrations of events or characters, but rather an externalization of the mental imagery invoked by the experience of literature. I want to pick up where words leave off by creating images to accompany the literature I love. By combing both art and words, I hope that I can enrich the experience of both.  

It’s easiest to say that my main medium is ink, but really that has come to mean all kinds of liquid materials including coffee, tea, traditional sumi, and watercolor. Conceptually, I appreciate the connection of ink and graphite to the writing process and literature. Because my work is based on ideas and structure, I also appreciate the straightforward ease of applying ink and graphite to untreated surfaces. 

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Inktober Week 1

It’s Inktober again! Here’s days 1-7 in no particular order.