~ Major Drawings ~

I refer to these pieces as Major Drawings for the amount of time and effort involved in their creation. I have an affinity for meticulous, intense detail and enjoy putting a lot of work into a small space. All the gridwork here was done by hand, no computers involved.

Centerpeace: The Light Within

A grid (graph paper) drawing on a sheet of 84,000 millimeter-sized squares. It was done with felt-tipped pens, such as Flair Pens, in the late 1970's. It took four years to complete and is about eight inches square. It won a 'Purchase Award' in the annual Union League Club of Chicago Art Show in 1978.

Vortal Locus

A color pencil drawing on a 16/inch blue grid containing 111,296 squares. It is 22" by 18" and took two and one half years to complete. I experimented with portraying an elongated center-oriented mandala to fit the size of the blue grid printed on the paper. I wove the gray and black border in an attempt to give more depth to the piece and elaborated on this in later drawing.

Garden Delight

A color pencil drawing on a blue 16/inch grid containing 111,296 squares and is 22" by 18 " It was a commission and took nine months to create. I was to highlight Earth tones and flowers. I first lightly sketched the creatures and flowers over the light blue grid, and then used the grid to create the patterns that give substance to those sketches. I added several mandalas to the background as they are very flower-like, and filled in the piece with an array of random patterns, playing with color and design. I especially enjoyed creating the double weave pattern on the right side behind the sunflower. Just to the right of the central blossom there is a hovering bee that became somewhat lost after I filled in the background.

Psidereal Matrix

A mixed media design from 16/inch blue grid of 90,000 squares. It is color pencil with fluorescent pencil, graphite pencil and charcoal pencil as accents. I used charcoal on the black sides of the outer weave, which will not reflect light and appear shadowed. The weave itself was an evolvement from the simple one I did as the border for Vortal Locus. Experiments evolve. This was a commission for a friend, and took a year and a half of steady work apart from my full time day job.

Many Jeweled Lotus

The first grid/graph paper drawing done where I filled in each and every square individually, taking a year to do it. Felt-tipped, water based markers, such as Flair Pens, were the medium. The light orange grid is millimeter, approximately 28 squares to the inch. This remains one of my personal favorites.

Peripheral Intent

A colored pencil drawing in which I drew my own grid and border. It is 34" by 26" and took several months to finish. I used regular colored pencils with some fluorescent pencils that cause an extra brightness to some colors in the picture. This is a fun technique that I now utilize often. The matting is a single sheet of gray matboard on which I used pastels, pencils and ink to make the mat appear multi-leveled, accenting the central art and giving greater depth to the entire piece. I designed it so that each of the four sides is face-up, so that it can be hung horizontally or vertically to suite the viewer's preferences.

Provocated Slant

A commission for a friend from work, approximately 24" by 18" I had the idea to fill the page with angled lines of random colors until there was no more paper visible. I used colored pencils for the interior and ball point pens for the surrounding border. I first sketched out three rectangles, one inside the other and parallelling the page, with a half-inch of border between them. I then began filling in the innermost rectangle with lighter colors, and added darker and more varied colors, tones and shades as the space slowly filled in. I let my scribbling cross over the sketched rectangle into the middle rectangle. I then filled in the rest of the middle rectangle with blue and black lines, stopping at the border of the outer rectangle. I drew black and gray lines to completely fill in the rectangle. I scribbled curlicues around all that from pink to black, in thickly tight swirls, giving this outer border a softer appearance. This highlights the pinks and purples of the interior work quite nicely. A fun project! This was a commission for a friend at work (my day job) and the art is approximately 24" by 18".

Transpectral Respite

I drew a grid on a blank sheet of 24" by 30" white paper. I then colored every other square with yellow, diagonally across the page. I then skipped a parallel diagonal row and colored in every other square of the next row with darker yellow. I did it again and used light orange, the colors evolving with each row. I colored on both sides of the original row until reaching the edges, filling in one fourth of the grid. I then colored in perpendicular lines of alternating squares with blues and repeated the color transitions in both directions. This filled in another fourth of the grid. I repeated this technique using reds in horizontal lines, and then using blues on the diagonal in the opposite direction of the original yellow. This filled in the entire grid in a clash of contrasting/blended colors which produce a mesmerizing effect. I refer to this technique as Colorblend. It is approximately 26" and 20". This photo was taken while the art was framed under glass. It was sold and I no longer have access for a better photograph.

Windowflux.

This is the first drawing I finished on a newly acquired sheet of blue grid graph paper that is 22" by 18" with a grid of 16 squares to the inch. This was much bigger than the millimeter grids I had been using and the first time I'd tried something that large. Having such an area to work on was fun to play, and inspired me to try out various ideas of colors, patterns and objects mixed together to produce this chaotic conglomeration of visual effects. I sketched out the shapes and objects in the middle, reproducing a picture from an album cover for the central colonnade. I made things up as I went along, experimenting with patterns in the shapes I had outlined. I bordered the results of my experiments with rows of patterned boxes, with the inner art somewhat blending into the boxes. The three or four rows of the randomly patterned squares encompassing the middle art, butt up on their outside perimeter to regularly patterned ones. The regimented border pattern blends into the solid gold framing, which was done with metallic pencils. pattern borders I put in the middle golden border It was chosen into the Chicago Art Institute's 1978 Chicago and Vicinity Show, Works On Paper.

Chromatic Pause

I drew this grid to make a colorblend design and added the sinuous shape in the middle as something new. The pattern design is colored pencil, with an interesting shading technique, and the curved item in the middle is ball point pen. The surrounding chaotic border is colored pencil. It took a couple months is 38" by 30" framed.

Creative Edge

I sketched out a variety of lines and shapes on a larger sheet of 28" by 22" paper. I used those lines to give direction to filling in the space with color, texture, pattern and shape using non-ink stick media. This included colored pencils, metallic pencils, graphite pencils, grease pencils (China markers), pastels, charcoal, crayons and fluorescent crayons. I used China markers for the outside texture on the matboard.

Transpectral Diffusion

This is a colored pencil drawing within a freehand drawn grid. It was the first time I drew my own grid and I wanted a loose feeling to it, although it appears more haphazard than I wanted. I added four areas of curved lines to the grid to give the impression of bulging. It is approximately 34" by 28" and took a couple months to create.