~ 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 water-based felt-tipped pens, such as Flair Pens, in the late 1970's. It is the last drawing I did with water-based markers before I started using colored pencils. I enjoy the harmony of center-oriented art, such as mandalas, and have done many such pieces. It took four years to complete, is about eight inches square and is my first 'Major' work. 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 a full sheet of this paper and is one of four on which I colored in the full sheet. 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 rectangular 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 is another full sheet of this particular graph paper. 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 thus appear shadowed. The weave itself was a progression 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. It is about eight by ten inches. 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 a few fluorescent pencils that cause an extra brightness to some colors in the picture. This is a fun technique that I now often utilize. 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 (day job), 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 congruent with 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 outer, central 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!

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 produces 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. It is also the first drawing I did with colored pencils. 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, between the outer bordering rectangled patterns and the inner area. The final outer border was a fun make-it-up-as-I went-along project. 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 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.

Kraftwood Memories

This is a colored pencil drawing I did for my brother's wedding, but it took three years to complete so it was also a third anniversary gift. Quality takes time! It is a conglomeration of scenes and sites from a family summer place in northern Wisconsin that we would go to as young children, the last time in 1960, before it was closed down by my Great Aunt, who owned it. There were many cottages that our various family members stayed in, but all gone now. The totem pole was (is?) actually the tallest such single trunk carving in North America that my Great Uncle brought back from Alaska in the 1920's, and remains in front the main house yet today, which is the only residence still standing. The place was known for its gardens and landscape, and hosted public tours in the latter 1930's to the early 1950's, until my Uncle died in 1953. Wonderful childhood memories that I tried to capture from old photos and more recent ones that I took when I visited the abandoned place years later.

Snowflake

This is a felt-tipped marker drawing done in the early 1970's before I discovered colored pencils. It is 16 inches in diameter on a 10/inch grid and took a couple months to complete. The title is a misnomer as snowflakes have only six sides, but I liked the title at the time and went with it. I actually cut out the art with a razor blade and mounmted it on a piece of orange matboard.

Medallion

This is another early drawing done with felt-tipped markers and is approximately eight inches square. It took a couple months to complete.

Mandala of Lines

This is a ball point pen drawing done in the late 1970's. I used the four basic Bic fine point pens, black, blue, red and green. I lightly drew the design with a regular graphite pencil and then filled it in with the pens. I 'squiggled' each color section with one continual line (I lifted the pen but always continued the line where I left off) as tightly as I could without overlapping the lines, until the space was filled and then I connected the end with the starting point to make a complete enclosed area. This gives the art a very soft appearance while, if looked at close up, it is extremely intense and detailed. I've used this technique many times and find it quite pleasing to my eye. It is approximately ten inches across and took several months of meticulous work.

Gray Matter

This is a colored pencil drawing done in the late 1970's. I random;y started the fill-in from the lower left corner, got a few inches up into it and decided to lightly pencil some lines at which I wold change the pattern employed. This evolved into the sinual tentacles that weave and flow in the central area. The light and dark gray object is separate from the other tentacles and became the focus and title of the piece. The out bordering was done with metallic gold and silver pencils, with regular graphite pencil alternating with the silver. A charcoal pencil was used in the four corners which does not reflect and stands out against the reflective properties of the metallic and graphite. This is one of my favorite pieces and is one of the four in which I colored in the entire sheet of the blue grid paper. This took six years to complete, working on and off over the time.

Torquellipsis

This is a fun project where I experimented with three-dimensionality and reflection in order to make the inner shape appear solid. The blackackgrouund is two alternating different shades of black and the shadowing is two shades of charcoal. I used the bottom area to test colors and endedup including it into the final piece. The black outer area is matboar, cut to curve around the bottom. It is about ten inches square and took a few months to complete.

Linear Diversion

This is a ball point pen drawing of mostly straight lines. The inner blue design is a single 'squiggle' line that continually changes direction as tightly as I could make it without overlapping, filling in the space until it is full, then I connect the front and back ends. The dark lines directly around it are curved to the shape of the circle, but the rest of the lines are straight. I had done about half and put it away for a number of years, and when I took it out again to finish it, the original ink had faded, much to my consternation. So the right side is darker than the left. The drawing is on a standard 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and thus is slightly smaller than that. I completed it in the 1970's I was able to take a photo of the outer liines before they faded so severely, printed copies of that with the center incomplete, and then fill in the center in other variations on a print. The next piece is one of those and quite clearly shows the dark line work.

Linear Diversions

A true representation of the original art with the surrounding black lines sharp and vivid, but a print. The inner circle was done on the print and is original. It is comprised of three squiggle sections, each one a single continual line. The outer one done with a fine point pen, the middle with a medium point pen and the innermost with a wide point pen. A much more dramatic piece than the previous drawing.

(Unfinished Squiggle Mandala)

A squiggle design that is not finished, but I haven't worked on it for several years. Bic Fine Point Pens. There will be circumferent bordering rings of the four colors around this stage. The various tones of the individual colors are due to using different pens over the tmes I have been working on this.

Dot Mandala

This is a line design mandala I colored in the early 1970's. I employed felt-tipped markers and only used dots, with several colors for each section giving the art a soft appearance. It is approximately eight inches square and took a few weeks to do.

Myndlspyll Pour

This is a colored in version of a line drawing I did in the 1980's. I drew the original piece with the intention of coloring it in and finally did so in the early 2000's. I used permanent markers rather than the water-based pens I had used before, understanding that the water-based pigments were not permanent. The flow of the ink from the permanent markers leaves a slightly defined residue which I utilized in keeping the direction of the coloring congruent with the space being filled. This effect shows up on this version in several places if one looks closely. There are metallic and fluorescent colors in parts the work. The art is approximately 16 x 20 inches and took a few months to complete

Mushville: Quite A Busy Little Place

This is a piece from the whimsical aspect of my art. I have drawn many such 'Mushroom Villages' over the years and this is the most recent, completed in 1989. It is approximate 14 x 18 inches and took several months to complete filling it in with colored pencils. The original line drawing was done a few years earlier and also took several months to complete. I have copies of the line drawing if you are interested in coloring in one for yourself!

Linear Reach

This was completed in the 1970's and is the most ambitious line drawing I have done. It is ball point pen, took many months to complete and is comprised solely of lines and dots, with no other shading. With a pencil, I lightly sketched out a variety of shapes on the page then used those as a guide to fill it all in with the pen. There is a section of hundreds of tiny words, but this copy is not detailed enough to show them. This representation is from a photocopy I made of the original right after I finished it and is the only remaining evidence I have of the piece. I matted and framed the original and gave it to my Mother, who lived in Connecticut while I was in the Chicago area. I asked her about it a few years later when I was visiting and she had no recollection of it. It was never found and I do not know if it still exists or was disposed of. A heart breaker for the amount of work I put into it, but I am grateful to have this copy to share.