Fantasy - Ink and Pencil

A few weeks ago I showed a couple of "fantasy" drawings done in Prismacolor Pencil. I described them as having been "done in an off-hand way", starting out fast and loose then tightened up and refined. A problem I had in posting them was the pencil color didn't show well on the blog, so in order to use the image I had to enhance them with PhotoShop. I decided to try a different approach this time. I tried working over the initial pencil with ink. The piece above is the result. It certainly does reproduce well and the total effect is quite different than pencil alone. Not that it is necessarily better but it's much crisper, more precise - so conveys a visual message completely at odds with that of the pencil alone. No need for enhancement here! 

In the end it's actually more compatible with some of the cartoon-like work I've posted here in the past,  except in those the ink was put down first then color pencil added as if it were a coloring-book image.

Here's a drawing never posted here before, part of a old series reflecting on my (new then) experience as a paraplegic. Among my many physical losses paralyzed legs are the most evident. Once past the trauma of that fact, early on I found myself looking with true interest at the way people moved.  I'd watch people walking, amazed at the complexity of body movements, the shifts of balance that kept them upright, like the precise placement of a foot in turning.  It was not hard to be jealous of the easy movements done with so little thought as they walked, ran, or as above - danced. Oh, I loved to dance! (I'm sure you can see my "envious eye" at work a bit in this one.)



"All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself."   Chuck Close

"Art is not about thinking something up.  It is getting something down."   Julia Cameron

"An idea is born when mind and eye see together."   Ratindra Das