I am working on a series of drawings that deal mostly with obelisks, skulls and stars. The compositions remain unified by the placement of the horizon line and the column. I have done this so I can explore different treatment of the surface of the paper in relation to the shapes that have been created. This gives me a constant denominator in each of the drawings so I can eventually compare them to each other and decide how the surface treatment sets the 'mood' of the drawing.
I find a mystery in the images I am using in that they leave me with more questions than answers. They cause me to look into myself and reflect on what a human skull signifies, and to examine what stars mean to us today and for those who lived long before, with the obelisk linking it back to society.
The three drawings pictured here are a few examples of the most worked surfaces in the series, combining ink pen, felt tip marker, highlighters, graphite, and gauche. The very dark one is also part of a series of drawings that uses only ballpoint pen. All are 25"x19" on stonehenge paper.
These skull drawings started with an agenda that changed on me as I was making them. They have each gone through different stages of finished. As I now see them on my computer screen I feel they have not been worked to the extent that I had originally desired. Which is that none of the white of the paper appears through the areas that have been filled in with ball-point pen. I want the areas of pen to rely more on the direction of the mark-making than the values created through overlapping lines. It is the impression that the point of the pen leaves on the paper that I am interested in with the pens I am using.
