Pen and Ink Illustrations
Memories
"Memories" is a narrative art piece based on a poem written by my grandmother, Millie Van Wert Davis, in her late 80's. She was writing poetry during classes she took at the local community college in Fort Dodge, Iowa near her retirement community. She later made collections of her writings and poems for each of the grandchildren.
I always liked this particular poem and thought that this could be something for us to collaborate on, poet and artist. The illustration is my interpretation of her poem, fifteen years after she passed at age 99. She was a farm girl in northern Iowa and grew up to be a teacher in a one-room school house in the 1920's. They are both framed together in this final narrative piece.
The frame is part of the story too: oak stickers sawn on a tractor sawmill at the neighbor's, Roy McClelland, for tomato plant stakes back when he was a grower. Dead and dying farm houses are an important character in country life, reminders of what was and what is to come.
Porte to Histoire
This subject is based on a photograph of a doorway in the city of La Redorte, taken on a trip to the south of France in 2013. It was produced at an ESSA drawing workshop taught by Frank White. A first venture into pen and ink in 2019.
Frank is a wonderful teacher and well known artist in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. He teaches at the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. I was fortunate to take several of his classes and to be a fellow student with him in some watercolor classes as well. It is important to look back on earlier work to take a measure of your progess and provide a map of where you want to go in the future. This is all part of the process of becoming a lifelong learner.
I began developing my drawing skills doing architectural drawings of cabinets in technical school in my twenties. Everything was flat and two-dimensional, representing structures in plan, elevation, and section views. This doorway is still just a series of marks on paper, flat and 2-D, but with the ability to add lines and marks for shading, texture and depth a third dimension is added. A story of material wear and tear becomes a doorway to history. (5.5" x 8")
Piano Keys To Life
This 2023 piece was for my grandson Declan, upon his high school graduation. He is a creative aspiring music production guy with a bright future. The backgound is watercolor washes with a chromosome motif layered on top. As a former science teacher, I couldn't resist a familial genetic theme in there. Pen and ink carry the keyboard and border. Painted on 140 lb Arches. (3" x 7")
Inside View
What if you could look inside of someone's mind just by looking out a window? I volunteered to be the subject for this experiment.
A small pen and ink watercolor painting of seven different panels representing the inside view in 2022. All manner of jumbled dreams, concerns, imaginings, and future wanderings were illustrated.
This was also an oppurtunity to revisit some old carpentry skills in the making window casements. The same techniques for building and installing full size windows was used on a small scale with hand tools here.
Parts were designed to scale and cut out of thin poplar strips with a small japanese pull saw. Making it into a double hung sash was more effort than I wanted to undertake, so a fixed single window sash it is. The watercolor is a light wet-on-wet with dry-on wet for details. The paper is a 117 lb mixed media type. (7" x 10")
Cherokee Marsh
This India ink painting is based on a photograph by Doreen Kunert, an old friend from Madison, Wisconsin, taken at Cherokee Marsh on the north end of Lake Mendota. It was a real challenge and took quite a bit of time and detailed work. The drawing, particularly the feet, took several drafts. The fine lines of the feathers required a very small brush. I painted this first and then came back to apply ink pen lines for definition. The walnut frame and mounting were completed at Arkwood Studio. Print (5" x 7") on 117 lb multimedia paper.
Curved Space
Inspired by artwork on the CBS Sunday Morning program, this pen and india ink abstract piece is a study on the interaction between matter and space.
Complementary colored panels are bent at different degrees of curvature and tilted to create levels and layers with blackness in the background. Curved folded orange panels interact with the blue celestial object exerting a force on everything around it. (8" x 10")
Balance
Balance is a busy meditation on the larger elements of peace, the sun, harmony, water, and the earth. It was another piece of "Covid Art" from 2021. Detailed ink pen drawing and mark making are a stress reliever. Watercolor was mostly wet on dry technique. The frame is made from leftover scraps of Iowa hard maple that came from repurposing my childhood bunk beds, built by my great grandfather Ben Davis in Clear Lake, Iowa in the 1930's. (5" x 8")
Swift Shoji Panel
This is a gratitude gift to an old friend, Maria, for her kindness and hospitality on a visit at her Wisconsin home. The wall hanging is basically a single panel design from one of my Shoji Lamps. (2019)
The painted india ink illustration of a Japanese Maple branch was based on a tree in front of Arkwood Cottage, our homestead in the Arkansas Ozarks. The synthesis of the red ink tones with the straight grain lines of the clear finish cherry wood frame and walnut inner kumikos plays well with the mulberry shoji paper. The long low curves of the frame speak of simiplicity and an understated elegance. (8" x 15")
Spring and summer of 2020 brought Covid-19 and a creative period inspiring pen and ink creations in the Arkwood Studio.
"Cherries Noire" was completed, having started on it in 2017. (8" x 8")
It was my first work with frisk art masking. Once I sketched the piece I frisked the black background areas and the light spots on the plant to mask. Then I inked and brushed the cherry blossoms and leaves. The frisk was peeled off and the dark work was begun. I painted a narrow border around it to mimic a layer of matting. When I built the frame (painted black with milk paint/top coated with water-based urethane) the single layer of matting lays just over the edge of the border, completing the illusion of a double mat -- more depth.
"Boho Native" was inspired by current Bohemian fabric prints, with a Meso-American color palette. (8" x 10")
I inked in all the lines with a pen, varying line weight. Then it was back to masking off all the objects to brush the three horizontal background panels first. I wanted to practice applying multiple washes. I have much to learn with technique here, mixed results. Then the frisk was removed and the red/white/brown object areas were brushed. Finally the blue bands were washed.
"Strained Glass" is the product of pent-up frustrations with the chaotic response to Covid-19. Art as therapy. ( 6" by 9") 2020
Focus on very small lines and spaces is a doorway to another realm where you have some control. This was my first attempt at inking an outer 2-color border repeating colors from the work to mimic a matt layer. The frame is red oak stained with the shop-made ebonizing solution I've enjoyed using as of late, topped with shellac.
"At the Office of Dr. Leary" explores the question of what might happen if Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy sought therapy from the good electric doctor. ( 9" x 9") 2019
This is a colored version of the original black and white piece completed last year ("Another Fine Mess"), based on the closing title screen from one of their movies. The primary work here is playing with cross-hatching of various shapes and sizes to create texture, disonance, tension, and gradient shading. I inked the frame with the same color as the hats for unity.
