Dance of Spring, 2023, graphite on paper, 10" x 10" A small drawing completed a few days ago. Where I am in Ontario, Spring has been slow in coming and the sky has been very grey. With luck, the sun will soon come from behind the clouds and things will warm up. Regardless, things are... Continue Reading →
For highly rendered ink drawings I like to start with a detailed graphite line drawing. This piece started life as a proposed book illustration. If you look carefully, you can see the vertical line that marks the edge of the original drawing. When the editor selected another piece in its place, I finished the drawing... Continue Reading →
Manuscript with Crow Skull A crow skull makes a poor paperweight, but casts a nice shadow. This is the manuscript of a novel I am currently working on—already woefully out of date as I’m in the process of a pretty major re-write (thanks to some on-point observations from my literary agent). I revise digitally using... Continue Reading →
A few years ago, I had to give up painting in oil because the paints triggered ocular migraines. Every painting session ended with me lying on the couch feeling like I was on a bad acid trip. Not fun. Then I learned about M. Graham odourless paints. These paints are a game changer for me... Continue Reading →
My Workspace For my first post of 2023 (March, I know) I thought I would show you where I spend most of my time. Since the autumn of 2020 I’ve been working to complete a number of projects that will be announced over the coming weeks or months. I completed 3 large drawings for one... Continue Reading →
Under drawing for We Shall be Near You Today I am sharing the graphite under-drawing for a new piece called We Shall be Near You. I borrowed the title from a poem by Yeats. In the context of this piece, the words refer to the idea of friendship and loyalty, the nearness of others. I’m... Continue Reading →
There’s an old T.Rex song called Summer Deep. The first verse goes like this… Summer deep is in the hills againHis lady is a lionessWinds of birds blow through the fields againInvaders from the true worlds Summer ends on September 22, so I suppose we are in Summer Deep now. I spent most of this... Continue Reading →
Over the past few years I’ve been pecking away at a series of works I’m collectively calling The Devil Tree. Some of these might be familiar—at least two have been offered as prints, and another was reproduced in my Darkling Lands 1 booklet. The picture below is a collection of these works. All of them... Continue Reading →
This past week was filled with drawing, writing, reading, torrential rain, flooded libraries—not mine—and patches of sun. Some of these things are related. I’m calling this post Little Summer, because so many small wonders seem to come our way during Ontario’s short pause in what can seem like an endless winter. Here’s one. A tiny... Continue Reading →
Another busy week in another weird summer. My new novel finally reached the point where the main character is calling the shots. If you write fiction, you know that this is the magical moment. It's certainly the point I wait for with great anticipation, when I start keeping a Moleskine near the shower and fill... Continue Reading →
Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author 