DRAWINGS. ILLUSTRATIONS.

Origins and observations

Drawing is the thread that runs through everything I make. Sometimes I love to draw and sometimes I despise it, but I can’t escape it— it's my primary tool and helps me make sense of the world. Some of these may look like paintings, but they felt like drawings at the time. They all have stories to tell.

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INKTOBER

ILLUSTRATIONS: OHMS

OTHER DRAWINGS

Inktober

Inktober is a sort of annual online drawing event, created by Jake Parker. I have only completed 31 days twice, and I've never followed the prompts, but it’s a good little kick-start for anyone who likes to draw. Below are some of my selects.

Ink drawing showing sharp trunks and branches of white trees converging in the center against a midnight black sky. Pinpoints of stars glitter in the space between the trees

Ink drawing of a black model ship in a bottle; it sports black sails and a pirate flag

Ink drawing of a stern-looking stevedore in a knitted toque, with a hoodie beneath his pea coat. Behind him looms a tall ship in full sail; presumably of his imagination or memory.

Ink drawing of a wood-handled hatchet. It has been left stuck into a tree stop surrounded by tall grasses and rocks

Ink drawing of a woman walking past a tall tree in the rain; she were a hood, a skirt and striped stockings, and carries her umbrella against the weather. A crescent moon hangs in the dark sky

Ink drawing of a striped, hand-knitted scarf with long fringe on its ends. It is coiled neatly and sits on a wooden surface

Ink drawing: close up of a crow, with one foot raised slightly; she looks off to the right with a gleam in her eye

Ink drawing showing two frames portraits. On the left, woman with bobbed hair and a striped shirt, with a feather quill adorning the oval frame, and the word “The Historian” in a banner beneath her frame. On the right is a man in a knitted toque and peacoat, with an anchor adorning his frame, and the words The Stevedore written in his banner

Ink drawing of a white coffee cup on a saucer. Steam drifts off the coffee, and a stack of books sits nearby; dark wood paneling is in the background

Ink drawing with four vignettes: A black-covered journal, mended here and there with tape; a care-worn envelope stuffed to overflowing with old photos; a packet of postcards bound with a ribbon; a skeleton key with a tassel to keep it from getting lost

Ink drawing: an adorable portrait of a black, three-speed bicycle, leaning against a few young trees as the sky in the distance grows dark

Ink drawing showing railroad tracks overtaken by weeds. The tracks cross a road running into the distance across a field, with s line of trees in the distance

Enter the Ohms

This is a body of work that I began in summer of 2020. I'm not sure why I named them Ohms, but in my mind they are storm chasers— looking for the source of lightning. An ohm is a unit that measures electrical resistance, so perhaps lightning is their ultimate high.

Loose inky sketchbook pages with rain and dark shapes, inhabited by the small red one-eyed ohm figures

Loose inky sketchbook pages with a rainy tumultuous landscape, inhabited by the small one-eyed ohm figures

Monochrome black and white semi-abstract image made up of lopping shapes amid dark shrubs and ghostly one-eyed shapes

Small red rounded figures called "ohms" walk single file through a landscape studded with tall, slender tree shapes

A line of small red rounded figures stand on a pier. Below them rage the white-capped waves, and above a terrific storm and black clouds

The small red ohms are crammed aboard three tall sailing vessels amid heavy wind and rain on dark waters

A black and white ink painting showing tall grasses and shrubbery. A few ohs, appearing in white, can be picked out of the landscape, and snow falls against a soft grey sky in the background

View over raging waves of a line of small red ovoid figures, perhaps crossing a bridge. Storm clouds and rain surround them, and a couple more of these figures are visible at the edge of the frame, farther in the foreground

A dreary downpour made of ink and water, we find our ghostly ohms in a doggy garden of tall, expertly manicured shrubs

A line of small red one-eyed figures climbs a straight incline; it looks like a bridge or part of a cliff. A single black cloud floats overhead

Small rounded, red figures are scattered across a pine-dense mountain side. Snow is falling and wind in wind-ing

Semi-abstract painting with a swathe of black on the right, some nautical-looking 'lines' as found aboard a ship, and a small row of red, rounded figures against a turquoise field in the middle distance.

Drawings

Other drawings I like

Below are some drawings that don’t cohere into a body of work, but they display some consistent threads of interest (not least of which may be weather).

Ink and wash drawing of a young woman, posing in Edwardian dress against a photographer’s mottled seamless backdrop

ALT: Graphite drawing of a woman in Edwardian finery with her hair pulled up. She has a steely countenance

Pencil drawing of a victorian woman from a cabinet card portrait

Pencil drawing of a young teen in a heavy sweater, sitting for a formal portrait, perhaps early 1900s

Pen, pencil, and gouache portrait of a women in a white edwardian dress, with her hair pulled up. Painted on the wooden lid from a cigar box

Drawing in tones of grey of a stalled Volkswagon beetle and a covered army truck at the side of a snow-covered rural road. A man is changing one of the front tires of the truck, and slender winter trees are in the background.

Graphite drawing of the façade of a building in New Orleans that has seen better days. It almost appears to be slowly collapsing into itself.

Graphite drawing of a care-word building made of a variety of materials, whose looks belie the magic within. Despite being a patchwork, it looks as stalwart as a seaworthy ship.

Graphite drawing of a street in the Bywater in New Orleans, showing a hulking old industrial building on a corner where the electric wires meet the light and street signs on a high wooden pole. It’s been raining and there are refections in the puddles on the pavement.

Charcoal drawing showing the silhouetted bulk of a highway overpass, with the blurred structure of more highways in the distance.

Charcoal drawing showing silhouettes of two sets of sunflowers; the flowers themselves are at the very top of the page, netting cropped out of the picture. At the bottom begin their stalks, and leaves cluster about halfway up and rise up to where the flowers are.