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
I've been working in graphite for the last couple of weeks, playing with line and values. Graphite is wonderfully suited to working out visual ideas without distraction. These two pieces are quite small, but incorporate a lot of detail. The end result is not unlike my silverpoint work, probably due to my use of a... Continue Reading →
The Stranger Greets the Dawn, 2023, ink on artboard, 10" x 11.5" I finished this drawing on September 10. It started life as an endpaper illustration for a forthcoming book project. In the end we chose another image, so I expanded the this original drawing and rounded out the composition. It is very much in-line... Continue Reading →
I just finished rendering this new piece. Below the final image, you can see the graphite underdrawing. I changed little of the composition as I inked beyond removing the line on the right that was intended to signify distant clouds or trees. It felt like a distraction from the flow. During the rendering of the... 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 →
Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author 