Category: pen and ink art

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Il Lee

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Il Lee is best known for his ballpoint pen artwork; large-scale abstract imagery on paper and canvas.He also creates artwork in a similar vein utilizing acrylic and oil paint on canvas. Lee, born in 1952, is a Korean painter who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.Lee received his B.F.A. (painting) in 1976 from Hongik University, a Korean school said to be “Western oriented.” He then moved to America; first to Los Angeles, then to New York, where he earned his M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in 1982. He studied etching as his minor at Pratt, and the sharp needles became a preferred tool. The sharpness of its line interested him enough to continue pursuing it through other avenues.

 The earlier works were all drawn on paper, but Lee soon began to work on large, primed canvases.The artist spends weeks, sometimes months, applying layer upon layer of ink to each artwork.Linework is built-up through a “scribbling” technique reliant upon the “speed, spin, and angle” of his pen in repetitive motions, sometimes becoming so dense that the line-work becomes a flat field of ink.The thicker layers can appear coagulated on the surface of the paper or canvas, with the dried ballpoint ink giving off a shiny purplish-blue hue.When working with paint on canvas Lee utilizes empty pen casings and other tools such as bamboo sticks, scribbling in the same gestural manner onto a wet surface layer to reveal colors underneath — an inversion of his ballpoint method.

More of Il Lee‘s distinctive artwork can be found at https://artprojects.com/il-lee/il-lee-ballpoint-pen-on-paper/. 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Aubrey Beardsley

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Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872–1898) was an English illustrator and author.

His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.

Most of his images are done in ink and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.

 Beardsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement, which also included Oscar Wilde.

Often despondent and introverted, Beardsley’s main preoccupation for his short 25 years in existence would be to curate a flurry of singular and sometimes  bizarre, artworks that challenged Victorian norms and whose enduring legacy compensates for his all-too-early demise.

Beardsley’s contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis.

Beardsley worked by outlining his sketches in pencil then tracing over them in black ink in a style reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts.

The simple elegance of his linework combined with the sharp contrast of black and white lent Beardsley’s works to a peculiar style comprised of Aestheticism, Symbolism, Decadence, and Art Noveau.

As though he was born haunted by his own premature death, Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings in black ink often developed under an obsession with the morbid — and it shows.

More of Aubrey Beardsley’s sketches can be found at https://www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/aubrey-beardsley and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley .

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery (midweek) — Peter Greco

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Peter Greco is one of America’s most experienced practitioners in the art of traditionally inspired, hand crafted lettering and typography.His continuous exploration and passion has enabled him to reach beyond design into the realm of fine art.While residing in the LA arts district, he was a founding member of the Downtown Artists Development Association and the Concerned Artists Action Group.Greco continues to design logos and lettering art by hand as well as to produce “calligraffitti” street art, hand painted signs, and interior and exterior typographic murals.

His work has been exhibited in various art galleries in both the Los Angeles area and throughout the United States.In addition, he has created an authentic body of Renaissance manuscript art as a library exhibit and as a graphic novel.Exquisite color palettes, deliberate paint strokes, meticulously chosen words and phrases concealed within metaphysical symbols all encourage the viewer to look for deeper meaning in each piece of art.

More of Peter Greco’s amazing designs can be found at petergrecoart.com.

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Rachael Pease

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Rachael Pease’s lush drawings, crafted in India ink on frosted Mylar, create mystical settings from trees and plant life observed in reality.

Pease grew up in rural Indiana surrounded by vast lands and forests, which influenced her works.Her pieces often start with a trees she’s come across – in the woods, at national parks, and sometime in the city.She takes pictures from different angles, prints them, and stitches them together to make collages, transforming what she’s observed in her daily life into surreal and timeless landscapes that contemplate the impermanence of the natural world.

She also consciously frames the drawings in a circle or oval, which seems to emulate the perspective of binoculars or a telescope.

In some works, the branches of the trees dominate the composition, in others, it is the strong labyrinth of roots.Her work is inspirational and lively, intricate and magical.More of Rachael Pease’s intricate drawings can be found at .https://www.rachaelpease.com.

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Benjamin Sack

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Benjamin Sack is an American artist who received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011.Sack’s work explores architecture as a flexible medium capable of expressing the unique space between realism and abstraction; where interpretation and our ability to create meaning is in flux.

Sack draws a majority of his inspiration from art history and classical music.By combining these interests, Sack’s works become symphonies of ink.Skyscrapers, bridges, cupolas, and arches all packed densely together create a city that could hardly be navigated, but when viewed from above result in a sort of chaotic perfection.His work invites the eye to explore drawings of the “big picture,” to gaze into a kaleidoscope of histories and to look further into the elemental world of lines and dots.More of Benjamin Sack‘s intricate work can be found at https://www.bensackart.com.