Iconoclast #7 (Mouser)

Tags

Iconoclast, mouser, silverpoint

Iconoclast #7 (Mouser)
silverpoint
3″ x 4″
2013
© Richard A. Kirk 2013

I threw on some Radiohead tonight and finished this little silverpoint commission. It is part of a series called The Iconoclasts, which is in turn part of a larger series called the Human Organizations Project. Tomorrow this guy will be packaged up and sent over the pond to Denmark to join his family. Compositionally I like the strong diagonal line.

- Richard.

Macro

Tags

Clavis Journal, macro photograpy, Ouroboros Press, The Black Dog, Three Hands Press

If all goes as expected, it looks as though I will have 3 drawings in issue number 2 the Clavis Journal. On a related note, be sure to check out  Ouroboros Press and Three Hands Press and marvel at the care and attention they lavish on their amazing books.

Also cool, and utterly nothing to do with my art, The Black Dog has a new one out.

I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday by pulling out the macro lens and taking a few shots.

Unsociable Snail
© Richard A. Kirk 2013

Robin’s Egg Blue
© Richard A. Kirk 2013

Eye of Toad
© Richard A. Kirk 2013

Fossils from Lake Huron
© Richard A. Kirk.

 

Silverpoint

A BIG thanks to Hi Fructose Magazine for featuring my work on their website today. What an amazing start to Victoria Day!

I mentioned yesterday that I was working on some silverpoint miniatures. I thought I’d share some shots off my drawing table. The pictures are a bit grainy but I took them in the late afternoon and the light was fading. I’ll post a good scan of the final piece when it is finished.

These are the basic tools: a piece of Linetek 600 illustration board (archival quality), sand paper, a stylus (0.5 mechanical pencil with silver wire inserted in place of graphite), and some ground (in this case Windsor Newton Permanent White gouache).

Using a hard graphite point I did a line drawing on the board. As you can see I re-interpreted the original idea from a sketch in my book.

The next step is the application of the ground. As mentioned, I am using gouache. The major consideration here is to get an even coverage (no puddles, lint or pieces of dried pigment!) The consistency of the ground is like homogenized milk.

I’ve angled the board so that you can see the ground drying on top of the drawing. The reason I do the graphite drawing with a hard pencil is that a softer lead will mix with the ground and leave unwanted streaks. I do two coats, one horizontal and one vertical.

I should hasten to add that there are many ways to to approach silverpoint, especially in the area of grounds. This is just a very simple and efficient way to get started and has been extremely useful to me over the years.

- Richard.

The Whispering Wind

Tags

coffee, drawing, Led Zeppelin, silverpoint, Stairway to Heaven, Whispering Wind

The Whispering Wind – a work in progress
© Richard A. Kirk 2013

I had an artistically productive day yesterday. I got in an hour and a half on novel edits sitting in Williams coffee shop. Later I prepped two silverpoint miniatures. One for a series called the Iconoclasts and another for The Secret Society series. I’ll show these little guys once they have been finished. In the meantime, I’ll give you a peek of a new ink drawing in progress that I’m doing called The Whispering Wind.

The Whispering Wind is of course a line taken from Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. The alliterative line has knocked around in my head for years and unexpectedly, when I had drawn 2/3 of this under-drawing it popped into my head. And there you are. The drawing wasn’t intended to have anything to do with the song. Or was it? Who can say what connections and associations happen in those hidden neural pathways. I am happy to imagine that at some level the line spoke to some part of my subconscious.

This is the first step. It’s a pencil line drawing on 140lb Arches hotpress paper. The next step will be to render and embellish the image with diluted acrylic ink using small brushes. I’ll post updates from time to time for those that are interested.

- Richard.

New Items in Webstore

Tags

cthulhu, Death Poems, weaveworld, webstore, works for sale

I posted a few new original works to my webstore. I’ve hightlighted them below. All works can be purchased directly from the store using Paypal and are shipped flat within  2 business days.

At the store you can also find a selection of other original works and prints.

Interior illustration from Death Poems by Thomas Ligotti
ink on paper
9″ x 6″

Cthulhu drawing from 2012 World Fantasy Convention Book
ink on paper
16″ x 12″

Loosening the Weave
Interior illustration from the 25th Anniversary Edition of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld
5″ x 6,” on a 7″ x 10″ sheet.

Transformation of the Carpet
Interior illustration from the 25th Anniversary Edition of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld
5″ x 6,” on a 7″ x 10″ sheet.

- Richard.

Peake

Tags

illustration, Peake, Titus Groan

Illustration by Mervyn Peake from Treasure Island.

There is very little that I can add to what has already been said about Mervyn Peake, other than to say what a deep and enduring impact his work has had on my own. His world was revealed to me through the worn covers of the Penguin Modern Classics Editions that sat on a wire rack in my local library. I picked them up and returned them to the rack many times before I finally took the plunge. A few pages in and I was was having a retroactive panic attack. What if someone had signed the books out and lost them before I’d read them!? As a young reader, crossing the border between Tolkien’s land of elves and hobbits to the shadowed walls of Gormenghast was profound. G. Peter Winnington in his book The Voice of the Heart makes the point that edges are where Peake’s characters come to important life changes. Without knowing that, I felt a seismic shift in what I understood to be possible in my own art, when I experienced Peake’s world for the first time.

I was introduced to his work though writing and only later discovered that he was a brilliant illustrator. The list of Peake’s illustration triumphs include Household Tales, The Brother’s Grimm, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and Treasure Island. The dense, beautifully worked style of these illustrations was an affirmation to me as I developed my own love of ink. Incidentally, artist P. J. Lynch did a brilliant job of capturing this aesthetic in his illustrations to Peake’s A Boy in Darkness while simultaneously expressing his own artistic presence.

Mervyn Peake

Peake died tragically young at 57. We can play the game of imagining what he might have produced if he’d lived longer, but at least we have the work he did create and the better game of understanding them.

“Now that he’s dead, ‘is secrets die with him
Like some lost language, or a hieroglyph
Time-shallowed on a stone.”

The Wit to Woo.

“Without heart, Peake tells us, the work of an artist is merely mechanical, characterized by

‘the lethal stillness of good taste and moderation, that landlocked harbour where the craft of an artist can gaze at its own image in the water, year after year, its woodwork freshly painted, its canvas neat and trim, its cargo rotting.’

Winnington commenting on text in Drawings by Mervyn Peake.

- Richard A. Kirk

Symphonist #1

The Symphonist #1
silverpoint
4″ x 3″
© Richard A. Kirk, 2013

It’s nice to get back to silverpoint after some months spent working in other mediums. The Symphonists is a series of silverpoint miniatures that I am doing for a friend/ collector on a subscription basis. Essentially, one drawing will be mailed to him monthly until the series of 8 is complete.

Richard.

Art O Con 2013

Art O Con 2013

One of two Daleks at Art O Con 2013

This past weekend we had the pleasure of attending Art O Con in Burlington, Ontario. The con was organized by Jaded Dragon Studios. A huge thanks to them for being so kind to us and making our experience so much fun. We caught up with some old friends and had a lot of interesting conversations over the table. Click on the panoramic shot to see how things looked just before the doors were opened. The Dalek in the second picture was actually pretty bad tempered even for a Dalek. I think when this was taken I was cowering under the table.

Richard.

Original Illustrations Available

Interior Illustration for Death Poems by Thomas Ligotti, 2013
© Richard A. Kirk, 2013

Interior Illustration for Death Poems by Thomas Ligotti, 2013
© Richard A. Kirk, 2013

A heads up to horror aficionados: I have posted two original interior illustrations from Thomas Ligotti’s Death Poems for sale. Click through to my webstore for a look. I am offering them at a sale price in celebration of the death of winter (albeit temporary!!)

Richard.

The Drowned Library Completed!

The Drowned Library, ink on paper, 10″ x 8,” 2013
© Richard A. Kirk 2013

Drowned Library detail

Drowned Library detail

Tonight I am posting the completed drawing called The Drowned Library. It was done as a commission but I will be making prints of it in the very near future. The prints will be high quality giclee done on German Etching Paper. I will post more details in a few days. If you are interested, leave a comment or message me. Often when I am thinking of making a print, it is the feedback that is the determining factor.

Richard.