ozarks

Black and White, and Grey All Over.

Posted on by azorch

4 June, 2018. Over the past couple of days I’ve carried around two pens – my trusty Uni-Ball Deluxe and a white gel pen – and this small, pocket-size Stillman and Birn sketchbook. As always, I’m interested in seeing just how far I can push my sketches while purposefully placing limitations on myself. In this case, the limitation is range of value: black, white, grey, and the implied value created by hatching.

It’s interesting to me how different textures can be achieved by varying the strokes, as well as changing the lines into shapes.

The format of this booklet is so damn small that it does force me to consider positive and negative relationships, as well as recognizing the limitations of drawing across gutters and within the margins.

I also have to stop myself from going to far, making too many marks. Limiting the mark-making and relying on contrasts is effective. As with my choice to draw and later add a spot color to sketches, there’s a mechanical appearance when working on the grey paper that I like.

Selectively choosing which elements get the addition of white allows me to be selective about which elements get emphasized. I think there are some real storytelling opportunities working with this illustration approach, but for now it’s just me fooling around.

Wedding Ritual

Posted on by azorch

8 May, 2018. We attended a wedding this weekend in an Eastern Orthodox Church. This was an interesting experience for me: many women were wearing some sort of robes or shawls, along with head covering; many men wore beards, some quite lengthy. The people of the congregation were genuine, the environment is clearly influenced by Byzantine structural and pattern designs, and iconography. The reverend father sang in chant throughout, and the small choir depicted here provided a choral response.

I’m not a religious person myself, but this was a fascinating reflection of the experiences in the Catholic Church of my youth. The liturgy – if I’m using the term correctly – interested me in the sort of call and response effect that was present. Ritual creates an atmosphere of reverence and inclusion.

I’m especially interested in the people and their choices of facial hair and garb. There’s a backstory here, one that I wish I’d made greater effort to uncover. I love history, and experiencing this ceremony, so unlike any other I’ve experienced, and which seemed entrenched in antiquity – as well as a culture entirely unknown to me – was an unexpected discovery in the heart of the Ozarks.

(Uni-Ball Deluxe in Canton 180 sketchbook.)

Pockets

Posted on by azorch

12 August, 2017. I’m in Rogers, Arkansas this weekend to help Kim get her new apartment set up. Neither of us know the area very well, so before we got the day of lugging heavy furniture up narrow stairs begun, I headed out on my road bike to explore.

My childhood memories of this place are that it was extremely rural and more than a bit like Mayberry. As I ride around, it is quite clear that things have changed a lot; urbanization has blanketed the area with high end retail, offices, restaurants, and lots and lots of paved roads.

But top a hill and just as clearly, the roots are still in evidence, pockets of the original rural landscape still exist. In a flash, I pedaled down a divided eight lane avenue, through a light, and past a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, there to discover this pasture and barn. (Blackwing pencil in Canton 180 sketchbook.)