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
There are 120,000 + species of flies in the world. Flies have many associations, some darker than others. One of the more positive associations is that of persistence, which seems apt in the context of this stippled piece. I started this drawing on November 1, 2025 and expect that it will take much of the... Continue Reading →
No matter how surreal or fantastic my pieces finish up, they nearly always start with natural forms. No matter how surreal or fantastic my pieces finish up, they nearly always start with natural forms. The shapes of insects, plants, bones, fossils etc. are all building blocks I use to create composition and meaning in my... Continue Reading →
A common question I hear is "where do you get your ideas?" I'm not sure I can answer that satisfactorily—it's a combination of lifelong interests and intuition. I can tell you how I get them to paper though. My favourite design tool is the humble Ultra Fine Black Sharpie marker. You can buy them by... Continue Reading →
The Darkling Lands is a new 40 page perfect bound book, which reproduces 28 of my images and includes a new weird tale titled Ecesis. I posted 10 copies on my webshop yesterday, and I am pleased to report they went quickly, but there will be more copies available in about a week. As I... Continue Reading →
During the latter half of October, I offered incentive sketches on my webshop - a free sketch with every shop order. There was some demand from people to purchase the sketches outright, so I introduced the Mystery Sketch option, which is still active. As you can see, as time went on, the sketches became more... Continue Reading →
It's October at last, my favorite month of the year. I have just added a small number of signed copies of Magpie's Ladder to my webstore. The constant reader will remember that Magpie's Ladder is my illustrated short story collection published by PS Publishing earlier this year. Get yours now! Also in celebration of October,... Continue Reading →
These clean line drawings are part of a series I'm currently working on between other things. Richard
Pollen is a new drawing (personal work) that I finished towards the end of January. It was done using .13 & .18 Rotring Rapidograph pens. The image below is a quick iPhone shot of a new work in progress called Hearts Divided. I'm hoping to get it done in the next few weeks, working on... Continue Reading →
Hot off the drawing table, a new ink drawing for the Antipodes Project originally started by artist Ben Tolman. Visit Joe MacGown's blog for a good background on the project. I really enjoy creating these intensely packed drawings. I should also mention that my drawing Hypnos is on display this weekend at Copro Gallery as... Continue Reading →
Symphonist No.5 is a silverpoint miniature (4"x3"). It's one of an ongoing series. Silverpoint lends itself beautifully to miniature work due to the precision you can get with the silver stylus. Over time, this drawing will darken as the particles of silver trapped by the ground begin to tarnish.
Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author 