I’m sharing a new piece today, built from a reference photo I took on a cool spring afternoon at the Georgia State Botanical Gardens in Athens.
Walking through the grounds, I was immediately drawn to the relationship between these two figures—a man reading on a bench and a nearby sculpture. I loved the accidental, imitative gestures; both the living man and the stone figure seemed equally invested in their quiet activities. The contrast between the fleeting stillness of the reader and the permanent stillness of the stone was a dynamic I wanted to capture on paper.
For this piece, I wanted the technique to reflect the atmosphere of that afternoon. Instead of rigid, heavy linework, I relied on quick dashes and the natural, expressive tendency of India ink. My goal was to give the illustration a whimsical and impressionistic sensation, capturing the feeling of the garden rather than just mapping out its exact details.
To balance that loose, kinetic energy, I brought in acrylic ink very sparingly. It was used just to provide some opaque grounding in a few sparse locations across the piece, anchoring the expressive ink lines and giving the composition a bit of weight.
It’s a quick study of a quiet moment—where life and art happened to be doing the exact same thing.
Reply