Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author
"there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" Sir Frances Bacon, Of Beauty, Essays" 1625
This watercolour is a study for a future oil painting. I wanted to give the figure an avian quality, hence the placement of the eye. The whole piece hinges on that pitiless eye! I think it's also quite funny. I have a series of paintings in mind featuring monsters in remote outdoor settings. I plan... Continue Reading →
There is still much to be done on this new drawing, but having finished one fairly defined section I thought I'd share a work in progress (WIP). If you saw my earlier post on this piece, you'll notice that I have added to the title. "Tears of the Poppy" is a line taken from the... Continue Reading →
“I tell you, there are more worlds, and more doors to them, than you will think of in many years!” ― George MacDonald, Lilith I've been thinking of doors to different worlds for many years. Or maybe its the same world, just many different doors. The first drawing was done in 2004, the second this... Continue Reading →
For the last couple of weeks I've been working on a series of cross hatched drawings. It started out as a test of some paper I found in the back of my paper rack called #234 Paris Bleedproof Paper for Pens by Borden and Riley. I have a habit of picking up tablets of paper... Continue Reading →
The Dark Bead is finally finished! This image shows the completed drawing, The Dark Bead. You can see details and work in progress images in previous posts. The Dark Bead is an ink pointillism drawing done primarily with a Rotring .13 technical pen, and a Koh I Noor .18 for the outlines. As is typical... Continue Reading →
Bells Call Others is a new drawing, just finished this morning. It was a bit of a digression from another drawing I am working on, The Dark Bead, occasioned by finding a piece of toned board in my paper rack. Working on toned paper had been on my mind since looking at some work by... Continue Reading →
This is my first drawing with the .13 Rotring Rapidograph. Until now I've been a die hard .18 Koh-I-Noor user. I still like the latter but I found that the Rotring pen delivered a great performance and gave me a much finer grain. I am definitely using this pen for the illustrations I am working... Continue Reading →
Drone is the 3rd Symphonist, a series of commissioned silverpoint miniatures.
This is a drawing called Amnesiac's Library. If you follow my work, you'll know that natural history and libraries are recurring themes. Amnesiac's Library nearly didn't happen. I started it several years ago but other things got in the way and it sort of settled to the bottom of my paper rack. My original plan... Continue Reading →
I came across this image while poking around on the Morgan Library and Museum website. It's a beautiful sketch by Audubon. In the notes I discovered that Audubon had written a few lines in graphite on the back of the paper. I don't know the circumstances that would have enabled Audubon to work at such... Continue Reading →
Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author 