MLYON.com » Drawing

pen and ink drawing of Miguel Rivera

Mike Lyon — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:08:17 +0000

Miguel Rivera is chair of printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute. He is a wonderful teacher – gentle and thoughtful. He has a great face and as soon as we met I asked if he’d model for a portrait. You can learn all about Miguel and see some of his work on his web site.

"Miguel" Jan 25, 2012, 77.5 x 44 inches, black and white ink on paper tinted black with sumi.

detail

the portrait underway October 25, 2011 -- this one took a LONG time to complete -- mostly because I was uncertain how far to push back in with black and I became cautious and slow about it.

Miguel in studio - he took two of my Elizabeth portraits to work up in collaboration. I think I am waiting for whatever of his work he provides me... Kinda exciting!

Danson pen and ink drawing 81 x 42 inches white and black pen on paper tinted rich brown

Mike Lyon — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:39:08 +0000

Drawing of my friend Danson – again, white and black ink pen on tinted paper. In this piece, I really LOVE the color I painted on the paper. It was so luscious I hesitated to draw over it. I’ve been layering up these colors, mixing pigment suspensions in water and using a spritzer to apply the color and a squeegee to gently smooth the liquid over the paper. I’ve discovered that the application of several layers of different color gives a livelier and more interesting surface than trying to hit it in one shot. Also — everything seems to work best if I dampen the loose sheet with color quite thoroughly, then apply vacuum to suck the sheet flat, then tape it down while it’s still very damp. I leave the vacuum running on low until the drawing is complete and as the paper dries, it shrinks slightly and becomes taut and flat.

"Danson" Sept 26, 2011, 81 x 42 inches, pen and ink drawing in white ink and black ink on brown tinted heavy watercolor paper

detail

drawing in progress with feet

studio view - early morning

completed drawing in studio

“Scotty” pen and ink drawing 92 x 45 inches on watercolor tinted paper

Mike Lyon — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:25:47 +0000

Artist Archie Scott Gobber generously agreed to model for me. We had a pretty good time together — I’d asked him to bring along something of his work and I was thinking he’d bring something large I could place behind him when I photographed him. He brought some very small stuff, actually and I got a huge kick out of one item — an old stamped metal “For Sale” sign. I cut some string and hung it around his neck to make Scott ‘for sale’. Most of my photos were mundane, but as we joked around, he gave me a huge Popeye wink and grin and… Well it just screamed to be made into art, I thought.

I drew the outlines of his sign, jacket, shirt, and head and painted a ginormous sheet of watercolor paper bright red, white, and blue. I imagined that these colors would remain pretty intense (as they had in two previous drawings) and I’d get a kind of American icon out of the work. As the drawing progressed, I was just never satisfied with it and I kept drawing layers of white over layers of black and then more layers of black and more layers of white until the ink became so opaque that the color was more or less lost and I wound up with something sorta pink and blue-gray. The trick, I suppose, is not only KNOWing when to stop, but then having the balls to actually STOP then! Still, it’s a striking drawing with lots of good stuff, I think…

"Scotty" September 7, 2011, 92 x 45 inches, pen and ink drawing in white ink and black ink on tinted watercolor paper

photographing the drawing in progress -- sense of scale?

drawing well underway August 22, 2011

detail

in studio September 7, 2011

Robin 85 x 45 inches – large scale pen and ink drawing in white, blue, black inks on watercolor tinted paper

Mike Lyon — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:34:37 +0000

Robin Carnahan portrait completed April 14, 2011. I first tinted the paper a deep blue using Prussian Blue and Carbon Black pigment suspensions in water. Then I drew in layers of white ink, blue ink, and black ink back and forth until I felt the drawing was no longer improved.

"Robin" April 14, 2011, 85 x 45 inches, pen and ink drawing, white and black ink on blue pigment tinted heavy watercolor paper.

sense of scale -- Mike Lyon with "Robin" drawing April, 2011

detail

“Joel” Large Scale Pen and Ink Drawing in White and Black Ink on Tinted Paper

Mike Lyon — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:39:14 +0000

REALLY love this one! I was tempted to title it “this is not Joe’s face” after Magritte’s famous not-a-pipe.

In 1991 I was in Japan with a group of US, Canadian, and European karate guys led by Tsutomu Ohshima. Ohshima Sensei organized a fabulous and exhausting tour which included visits to Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto — we met and watched demonstrations by elderly masters of kyudo, judo, kendo, were wined and dined in traditional Japanese fashion, and ended in Tokyo where we participated in the 60th anniversary of the karate club at Mr. Ohshima’s alma mater, Waseda University.

One evening we dined at a wonderful sukiyaki restaurant where groups of four or five of us sat around low tables with hot braziers. I must have appeared to be the senior in our group, because our very young waitress singled me out to receive instructions for preparation of our meal.

My Japanese is limited to counting, karate words, printmaking words, “please, thank you, excuse me, where is the …”, etc.

Wakarimas-ka? (do you understand?).
Wakarimas (I understand).
Wakarimas-sen (I do not understand).

The movie, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” had premiered a year or two earlier and the youthful fad of that time was to append a sarcastic “NOT” to the end of statements — like — Don’t worry, I love you… NOT! So this waitress, pointing with hashi (chop sticks) to each different meat and vegetable and to the metal pot of boiling broth in front of us gave long and detailed explanation of each step. A full minute or more of monologue and I didn’t understand a single word of what she’d said, but I listened intently and, at the end, she asked, “Wakarimas-ka”? Now THAT was something I understood and, Bill and Ted style, I made my first effective joke in Japanese. YES, I replied with enthusiasm — “HAI! Wakarimas… SEN!” And our pretty young waitress in her beautiful traditional kimono fell over on the floor laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hand fluttering in front of her teeth and another waitress, ancient and wrinkled scooted over, scolded her, shooed her away and looked after us for the rest of the evening with boring decorum. Sigh.

So I’m reminding you that, although this LOOKS a bit like an oddly colored photographic portrait of a talking head, it is NOT. It is ‘merely’ a collection of completely abstract lines and squiggles drawn in ink on tinted paper using many ink-pens and NOWHERE is there a face, a shirt, an eye, a button, a tooth, anything plaid, etc. ONLY ink on paper! But organized in such a way that, in spite of the completely non-representational nature of the marks, their whiteness and blackness, the unexpected pinkness of the paper — our eyes and minds effortlessly re-integrate all this into “Joel” – if you knew Joel, you’d recognize him. It’s the same with all portraits, paintings, sculpture where there’s some meaning encoded — although there is NOTHING human-like in the ink, paint, marble, etc — our minds are expert at associating our visual experience with things we ‘know’ and in a weird way we think we are seeing, in this instance, a person. Just sayin… This is Joel… NOT!

The white ink on this rose tinted paper POPS. I prepared the large sheet by painting it with several washes of quinacridone red pigment plus a bit of carbon black pigment mixed into water. I drew the brightest 2/3 of the image with white ink squiggles and the darkest 2/3 of the image with black ink squiggles. So 1/3 of the image is white line over rose tinted paper, 1/3 of the image is black line over rose tinted paper, and 1/3 of the image is white over black over rose tinted paper.

"Joel", completed Mar 20, 2011, 87 x 45 inches, white and black ink on tinted watercolor paper

My model, Joel Goldman, is an attorney turned novelist. We’ve known one another since childhood. He’s a great guy – clever, articulate, sarcastic, interesting. You can see all that and more in the portrait, I hope. He likes the drawing. The other night, we had dinner with his sister, Susan Tivol, who, it seemed to me from her reaction to seeing an iPhone image of Joel, didn’t much care for it. I think it was the particular image, catching Joel in mid-something she (subtly) objected to — and this is a shame, really, because she has a GREAT face and I’ve been trying to convince HER to model for me. Maybe SOME day… Meanwhile, if you’re interested in Joel’s books, have a look at these:

Technically, this is another drawing in light and dark on mid-value ground. I continue to follow some giant footsteps including:

I spent several months working on the image and calculating all the miles of ink squiggles – this one was a huge challenge for me and I made a number of experiments in advance of my final push to complete “Joel” (see previous articles). The actual execution of the drawing took only about 230 hours. Here are some photos of the work in progress…

detail of white/black interaction

March 10 - second layer of white contours goes down

March 14 - one more day of white ink

March 15 - black ink begins

March 19 - as the sun rises - about 20 hours of drawing still ahead.

Elizabeth – Six Experiments in Two-Color Drawing

Mike Lyon — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:18:31 +0000

composite of the six variations of "Elizabeth" drawn during January, February, and March 2011

I wanted to close in on an optimal application of white ink from the new pens my stepsons Scott and Andy turned me onto at Christmas. One great characteristic of this white ink is that it is not 100% opaque. Subsequent layers of line further whiten earlier layers. This semi-opaque (or semi-transparent) quality is pretty wonderful. It now appears that the whites continue to lighten through three to five layers — the black pens I’ve been using are much more saturated — maybe a second layer darkens the first, but not by much — but black ink over white turns a very deep gray and white over black turns a lighter gray and continued drawing produces much greater variation in actual ink value than I was able to achieve with black alone. This is cool and adds a lot of very interesting complexity. It makes the process ever so much more difficult to control while it makes the drawing objects more interesting!

The underlying images of the six Elizabeth drawings are identical but my approach to drawing each is different.

As with most of the images on my web site, you can click on these images to pop up an enlargement. To view a popped-up image full-size, right-click the image click ‘View Image’. You can magnify it by left-clicking on it. Click the ‘back’ button on your browser to return to this page.

"Elizabeth 1", Jan 2011, 24 x 20 inches, black ink in squiggles on white paper

This image (Elizabeth 1) was the first I tried. It’s black ink on white paper. There are 20 drawing ‘layers’. Each layer contains numerous ‘contours’. The perimeter of each contour was drawn and then a smaller contour drawn which was offset inward 1/20th of an inch and parallel to the first. And so on, stepping in 1/20th of an inch until the original perimeters were all filled with similar equidistant lines. All contours of each drawing layer were treated the same way and with the same 20th inch offsets. Wherever the contour perimeter was the edge of the drawing (as it was in the left, top, and right sides of most layers), each line drawn exactly overlaid the previous and the development of cross-hatching was prevented. In areas where the contour changed from layer to layer, deep values developed through cross-hatching as usual. Where layers shared common borders (as at the edge of the drawing), minimal value developed.
The result seems similar in ways to some impressionist and cubist work – this is due, in part, to the odd steps in value from the image borders in the top 2/3 of the image which not only produces some odd cubist-like interfaces between light and shadow inside the drawing, but also seem to crop the head and hairstyle in a manner reminiscent of an earlier time. An appealing atmosphere of strangeness developed.

"Elizabeth 2", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in squiggles on white paper

Elizabeth 2 was the next drawing in the series. This one was calculated exactly the same as the first, except the offsets for earlier layers (darker layers) were smaller and were incremented for each subsequent layer. The result was similar to this image but a bit coarser and darker. Before this photo was shot, I’d gone back in with a dozen or so layers of white lines in order to weaken the blacks in the lightest areas. This produced a somewhat gray (rather than black) line in the whitest parts and improved the effect.

"Elizabeth 3", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in hatches on tinted paper

Detail of "Elizabeth 3" in straight hatches

Elizabeth 3 is like Elizabeth 1 in that it has fixed offsets across all layers, but the paper is tinted dark gray, the hatches are straight lines, and the hatch angle is different for each layer. White hatches went down first, then black hatches. The value of the tint was too deep so there’s greater contrast between the white and the tint than between the black and the tint. About 1/3 of the drawing is just white on gray, 1/3 is black on gray, and 1/3 is black and white overlapping on gray. The proportions of white and black are incorrect for the value of the tint. This was a good experiment – I learned a lot, and I do kinda like the cool ‘screen’ patterns.

"Elizabeth 4", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in spirals on tinted paper

"Elizabeth 3" black spirals underway

Elizabeth 4 is VERY different from the others and I think it’s a cool idea. This approach might work better on a larger scale. Again, the tint of the paper is deeper than I’d intended. I wanted to draw this one in spirals. I calculated a faceted spiral (the spiral approximated by straight line segments) with segments 0.175 inches long and the radius incrementing from the center 0.1 inches per revolution. A cool property of spirals is that if you rotate any spiral around its center, the rotated spiral is parallel to the original – if you rotate it 180 degrees, the new spiral line is centered between the original spiral line. This is difficult for me to describe, but my process in calculating the vectors to be drawn was to copy the spiral, rotate it 126 degrees from the previous (this keeps replicating the spiral at 1/3 of a circle plus 1/3 of 18 degrees since 19 spirals cast 18 degrees apart cover 360 degrees). My black pen draws a line about 0.007 inch thick. I would draw 19 layers in 19 rotations and spiral grows 0.1 inches per rotation, so for blackest areas of the drawing, each line would be a bit more than 0.005 inches from its neighbor – this is a bit less than the 0.007 line width, so I’d have the slight overlap which I like. Each drawing layer contained the contours of all areas darker than the threshold of that layer. I cast the entire spiral onto the contours and clipped the spiral so that the parts of the spiral outside the perimeter of drawing contours were deleted leaving only the pieces of the spiral which were inside the contours. Since ALL drawing layers included the darkest areas, those areas had all 19 spirals drawn. The lightest layer had only 1 contour drawn, so values were developed. I centered all the spirals for black lines on the pupil of Elizabeth’s left eye (dark side) and centered all the white spirals on her other eye. It was an inordinate amount of work for a not very impressive drawing. But interesting stuff!

"Elizabeth 5", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in squiggles on sumi-blackened paper

. Elizabeth 5 – I tinted the paper deep black with several applications of sumi (Japanese carbon black). Then, like Elizabeth 1 in reverse, I drew with white ink and fixed offsets of about 0.05 inches for all 19 drawing layers (skipping the 20^th layer which would have covered the entire drawing rectangle). It turned out that .05 offsets for 19 layers was too dense (the white pens I used drew a relatively fat 0.02 inch line) and the lighest areas ‘flattened out’ so I couldn’t perceive any difference in the six or 8 lightest layers. The whole drawing looked flat and dead and… White! So I went back in with the same black lines I’d used in Elizabeth 2, stopping after a dozen or so layers. The drawing was still disappointing.

"Elizabeth 6", Mar 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in squiggles on sumi-blackened paper

.Elizabeth 6 was very similar to Elizabeth 5 except the offsets for the white squiggles were incremented from about 0.03 inches for the whitest contours to about 0.1 inches for the darkest. Again, the entire drawing got way too white and the lightest third or more of the drawing was all white and the drawing of those layers was lost. I drew the entire black from Elizabeth 2 and the drawing got too dark and noisy. So I drew the whitest layers several more times and… Well it wasn’t very successful either. But I learned SO much that I felt confident to begin a very large portrait, “Joel” and had much better results.

Danielle – developing two color drawing technique

Mike Lyon — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:28:25 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that I’m fascinated by Renaissance drawings on tinted paper with light and dark inks or chalk and charcoal. Here are some examples by Albrecht Durer painted in white and black with a brush on tinted paper:

My kids know of my interest — for Christmas Scott and Andy gave me a variety of white and silver ink-pens for my drawing experiments! What a GREAT gift! And they turned me on to JetPens.com at the same time (Japanese pens — VAST variety OMG — though my kids all tell me NEVER to say ‘OMG’ in public)!

In preparation for larger scale work, I made several series of small drawings in order to experiment with color and value for the tinted areas and to learn more about how the white inks might work for me in these drawings. The first series were three drawings of “Danielle”. I later made six of “Elizabeth” which I’ll show in my next post.

A little like the story of the three bears, my first tinted ground was ‘too dark’. Then I came to the second drawing, and I made that one ‘too light’. Then I made a third drawing and the ground in that one was ‘just right’ — or close enough. My wife thinks “Danielle” is spooky looking, but the image stirs me in an indescribably delicious way (from Goldilocks to Peter Paul Mounds)… I really like the way this drawing pulls at my gut! I also really like the somewhat opaque nature of the white ink — it gets whiter and whiter with each subsequent layer (a dozen or so layers of white in this drawing) and covers both the tinted ground and the black ink in a very appealing way!

“Danielle 3″, Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyYwB56Tkbk

three Danielle drawings -- like the three bears, the first ground was tooooo dark, the next one was tooooo light, and the last one was JUST RIGHT (or at least getting pretty close)!

"Danielle 2", Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

"Danielle 3", Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

Danielle 1 underway in the bright morning sun

Danielle 2 (foreground) and Danielle 3 (top) just getting underway

setup for time lapse video of application of white ink to Danielle 3

Drawing in Silverpoint and Copperpoint

Mike Lyon — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:41:34 +0000

While I began to study fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, I became interested in Renaissance drawing, especially silverpoint drawings by Da Vinci which were illustrated in books in the Furness Building’s fine arts library. I copied many in pen and ink and although I didn’t understand how they had been made, the silverpoints from the old masters were infinitely subtler and more beautiful than my pen and ink copies!

Late in 2010 I came across some silverpoint supplies and from November 2010 through December 2011 I made numerous experiments drawing by machinery using silver, copper, and gold (silverpoint, copperpoint, goldpoint) on prepared panels and papers. These were very interesting to me and I made a number of jigs to hold the fine metal wires so that I could lift and drop them easily using a solenoid mounted in the CNC machine for drawing. None of my jigs to date have been very successful — there are many problems still to overcome. In the meantime, I ruined half a dozen complex drawings and only a couple (illustrated below) were worth photographing and showing here. I’m still considering ways to improve my jigs in order to allow me to complete large drawings — the silverpoints, in particular, have a soft pencil-like character which is very appealing to me — graphite abrades much too quickly for any simple holder I’ve come up with, but the silver wire lasts a long time long enough so that I SHOULD be able to use it for my work. So far, however, the wires tend to harden and break at the tip of the tubular holder or at the set screw which I use to adjust and hold the length of wire for drawing. The tip tube must be less than a wire diameter from the paper or the (soft) wire will bend and pull out. This tends to make overly dark and wide marks which are not generally aesthetic.

As I mentioned, there’s still a lot of work left to do before I’ll be able to produce decent large-scale drawings in silverpoint.

"Sara with dog and shoes", Nov 2010, 16 x 20 inches, silverpoint on panel

"Jessica", Dec 2010, 20 x 16 inches, copperpoint on panel

For my first attempts, I glued a silver wire into one of the used pen cartridges and used the pen jig to hold and move the wire.

Later, I made some fancier jugs to guide and hold the wire.

22 guage silver and gold wire and jigs.

Grass3 30 x 58 inch pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:45:53 +0000

Grass3 was completed in August, 2010. 30 x 58 inches it took took an inordinately long time to draw.

Grass3, Aug 2010, 30 x 58 inches, pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper

detail of drawing

detail of lower left

detail of lower right

http://mlyon.com/wp-content/gallery/grass3/2008_08_grass3_588x400.jpg

Grass3, Aug 2010, 30 x 58 inches, pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper

detail of drawing

detail of lower left

detail of lower right

Chandler – 84 x 45 inches pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:54:40 +0000

Chandler is an old high school friend of my children. Last year I ran into Chandler and was struck by his great head and asked if he’d model for a portrait. He agreed and I phoned and emailed him more than once or twice in an effort to schedule him into my studio. He never replied and I eventually sorta gave up. I saw him again at our son Andy’s wedding and, with a couple of martini’s under my belt, gave him a pretty hard time about never having replied. So a few days later he called and we set a date and he and his girlfriend, Jessica (another high school friend of the kids), came down and modeled — and we talked about shooting some video as well — that’s what Chandler does — he produces videos for schools and museums, and his hobby is short subjects about artists.

Paul Catanese and Dr. Angela Geary have been contracted by A&C Black Publishers to co-author a book on Computer Aided Manufacturing in Fine Art Printmaking. Paul was in the audience during my talk at SGC Chicago and later asked me if I’d be willing to ‘be a chapter’ in the book. I said ‘SURE’ (duh)! In recent months, Paul has interviewed me at length by email, phone, and now in person, since he was in Kansas City last Friday and Saturday recording our conversations, photographing in the studio, poking around, and getting real specific on exactly how I use CNC and other computer technology in my work, especially in woodblock printmaking. Friday morning when my drawing of Chandler was nearly complete, Chandler and Zac (videographer) met Paul and me here in the studio and shot video of Paul saying nice things about my work (and Chandler saying nice things about his portrait). So it’s turning out to be a nice little collaboration! Chandler, by the way, seemed to really like this drawing:

"Chandler", 2010, 84 x 45 inches, drawing in pen and ink on 300 lb. hot press Lanaquarelle paper

detail of head

detail of bottom center

detail of bottom left

Rousseau – 75 x 45 inch pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:38:08 +0000

Our good friends Ed and DJ were having dinner with us at a nice Westport restaurant and Rousseau served us (she later recalled that we were a ‘good’ table). She was so pleasant and with such a mobile expression and well defined features and that wonderful tuxedo-esqu blouse… I wanted to use her for a portrait right away… DJ asked me if there was something wrong — she said I kept staring at our waitress — and honestly, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I introduced myself and asked if she’d model for me. She was flattered, said yes right away, and a few days later came down to the studio so I could photograph her. I’d asked her to wear the same blouse and… It was a terrific 90 minutes as she told me about her life and childhood and parents and… Well — a number of my photos of her are super-expressive and well suited t0 my drawing, painting, and printmaking… But this one called out to be first and I love the image and love this face and wispy hair and… Well, EVERYTHING, really. Kinda recalls earlier Netherlandish portraits, doesn’t it? A little?

"Rousseau" 2010, 75 x 45 inches, drawing in pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper

Detail light side eye

Detail lower right with pencil signature

Rogier van der Weyden's c. 1440 silverpoint on paper portrait of a young woman 16.6 x 11.6 cm

Judith Leyster's 1629 oil on canvas Jolly Toper 89 x 85 cm (recommended by my great friend 'V' who suggests that 'teeth' in art is quite rare)

Michael – 74 x 44 inches large pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:29:28 +0000

October, 2009, Michael Rees was one of 15 artists invited to Kansas City by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art for their 15th Anniversary Celebration.

Michael is a great guy, established artist, extroverted, outspoken, and a bit larger than life. We’d made a date for him to visit my studio and shoot sources for a portrait while he was here, and I thoroughly enjoyed him! After the shoot I went to a huge breakfast with Michael, his wife Mary Ann Strandell, and Chris Brown (another guest artist in town for the event) at YJ’s, the cozy cafe next door to Birdies (Peregrine Honig’s lingerie shop)… What a great morning — I don’t get out much – this was so VERY stimulating!!!

Thanks, Michael, for the wonderful morning, and for your patience in modeling — I think you turned out to be a very interesting head!

"Michael", 74 x 44 inches, completed June 20, 2010, pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper. Exhibited in AMERICA: Here and Now in 2011

Detail of pencil signature and ink squiggles

Detail around eye

Detail

detail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IvmKYXyyAk

Michael Rees lectures above — See more of Michael Rees on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp-9l7-95zs

Impromptu video review from AMERICA: Here and Now exhibition May 5, 2011

What a HUGE disconnect between the instant of the snapshot, the hundreds of hours to produce the drawing, and the video record of the lecture… Mind boggling! So mind boggling that I can’t comment beyond the mention… YOU think about it!

Jennifer – large pen and ink drawing 85 x 43 inches

Mike Lyon — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:15:13 +0000

'Jennifer', June 13, 2010, 85 x 43 inches, pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper

detail of dark side of face

detail of eye

detail of crochet from lower left

16 Views of Peregrine Bunny 128 inch pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:46:17 +0000

An unusual edition of three original pen and ink drawings plus two proofs — drawing began in late April and finished up in late May. Can drawings be prints? These are not at all printerly, but there ARE three identical (in the sense of an edition of prints) original drawings, each one measuring 18 x 128 inches of very fine black ink pen drawn on heavy hot-press watercolor paper. They were completed around May 20, 2010. Also two proofs with some variations which were accordion folded in anticipation of making them into books. One of those is being framed as a long scalloped drawing, the other may eventually become a rather unwieldy 16 page book 18 x 8 inches when closed.

Thanks SO much to artist, Peregrine Honig (also see HERE), who bounced purposefully for two hours on the small trampoline in my studio as we chatted and photographed hundreds of mostly very blurry images while she wore her fabulous black and silver sequined mini dress with matching bunny eared hat!!

You may open a higher resolution version in a new window by CLICKING HERE

It’s a bit difficult for me to illustrate such a long image on a web page, so here’s an experiment suggested by Scott Goldberg — I’ve rotated the drawing vertically and enabled a script so that as you move your mouse over the image below, an enlargement window should appear and you can magnify any area you please.

You can make the window larger or smaller and magnify or reduce the image in the window by holding down your mouse button and moving left and right and up and down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C38ADTUEJlo

Topper 79 x 38 inches large pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:32:12 +0000

Linda (the model’s spouse) phoned me last summer to say that she and her husband LOVED my drawing of “Arthur” which they’d first seen at the Kemper Museum’s Backstage Pass show, and again later at Arthur’s home. She wanted to give her husband, Topper, a portrait (of him) for his birthday. I thought Christmas might be more realistic and eventually, Topper came to my studio and modeled for me. It was VERY fun — what an interesting man, and so pleasant! Excellent model, too!

It seemed to take forever to narrow the photos down to a handful — some of them full figure and some just of the head. Topper and Linda and I consulted and, based on Toppers dislike of my favorite head, I decided to use the standing portrait he liked best. It turned out to be VERY difficult to get an image I liked and which I thought wnted to become ‘art’. After MUCH adjustment back and forth, an image eventually developed which I thought worthy. However, that image was a BEAR to complete. For some reason, I could NOT keep my pens working and went thorough over 150 of them before I called it ‘done’!! But the drawing turned out very well, I think!

"Topper" 2009, 79x38 inches, pen and ink on Rives BFK paper

detail

I received a very sweet note from Topper after I delivered the framed drawing:

November 2, 2009

Dear Mike,

Your artwork is absolutely captivating.

Seen from afar or near – from a “micro” aspect, or a “macro” aspect – it simply soars. The overall composition is commanding and, at the same time, any square centimeter of that overall composition is utterly fascinating in its intricacy and rhythm

Mike, you are a truly grand visual artist.

And, I must add, a very smart human being. You continuously demonstrate intellectual prowess as well as psychological observations of considerable perspicacity.

And add this to your “human package”: you are just a prince of a guy.

Congratulations my friend, on your marvelous accomplishments, but also simply on the qualiry of the life you have led.

Sincerely,

Topper

‘Joanne’ painting 35×21 inches on tinted paper

Mike Lyon — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:32:04 +0000

Today I completed this (little bit scary) portrait of my Mom (Joanne) painting in white and black Golden Liquid Acrylics over paper tinted blue-gray using dilute sumi and prussian blue applied to the paper by wiping with a sponge.

This and the previous painting of ‘Lee’ completed a few days ago are experiments in the sort of light and dark over mid-value drawings which were popular in Europe 400 years ago. I’ve selected two examples from the Goldman Collection of Italian drawings. I was lucky to see the exhibition of this wonderful collection at the Chicago Art Institute last year — you can obtain the FABULOUS catalog of the collection from Amazon.com well worth the $47 price!

My approach is very similar to the tack I took with my “Jim” lithograph — overlapping layers of line to communicate the value gradations of the image, but the paint makes these much more tactile — the paint builds a very heavy impasto as it overlaps and makes an interesting if somewhat bumpy surface — I LIKE these!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMydBVkprok

the painting begins with white acrylic paint applied to tinted paper

here the white painting is about half done

the white painting is complete

painting of black is about half-done -- LOVE those moire spirals!

detail showing the Paasche Flow Pencil painting black over heavy impasto

painting of black nears completion

the painting is complete

detail of painting

'Lee' and 'Joanne' complete

‘Lee’ painting 35 x 21 inches

Mike Lyon — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:56:02 +0000

This was a ‘quickie’ test of painting on paper using a Paasche Flow Pencil and Golden liquid acrylic paints. I first toned the paper using dilute sumi and a bit of prussian blue pigment, applying it quickly with a sponge until the paper seemed about mid-value. Then I applied white paint over the paper, then black paint and… VOILA! Seems to have worked pretty well during this small test… About 14 hours of actual painting plus several days of preparation to figure out all the gazillion lines! OH! And this is an image of my Father!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWWuUOdYOZ0

The painting nears completion as black paint is applied over tinted paper and white paint.

'LEE' 35 x 21 inches, 2009, acrylic paint on tinted paper.

Jessica Paper Doll

Mike Lyon — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:36:41 +0000

Late last year, the Beach Museum of Art commissioned me to produce an edition of 30 prints in connection with the exhibition of my work there (which opened April 14, 2009). The prints were to be no larger than 10×15 inches and ‘suitable for family viewing.’

Bill North and I had some interesting discussions about ‘what is a print’ in connection with this edition. Initially I’d intended to print each sheet in colors, then draw on top in register. In the end, I chose to draw in red, blue, and black inks to produce what is to my knowledge the very first fine-art edition of drawn drawings (or prints)… In the broadest sense of the word, I think, the noun ‘print’ is synonymous with the noun ‘multiple.’ But, since this image was created on a single sheet of paper, roughly 5 x 12 feet, even the word ‘multiple’ is subject to question. BEFORE I tore the sheet apart, it was most definitely a pen and ink drawing. Once I’d torn the sheet into 45 pieces, each about 10×15 inches, it became an edition of ‘prints’ I think, even though each is an original drawing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UQz0LdcRgU

"Jessica Paper Doll" 2009, 10x15 inches, pen and ink on paper

example of a 19th Century Japanese paper doll woodcut

a contact sheet of the photos I considered for the paper doll drawing(s)

one of the (many) late mock-ups for the drawings

a sheet of 10 proofs with various approaches to the drawing - about a month of work from the first to the last

final drawing with red ink begins

final drawing with blue ink underway (blue on red)

5x12 foot drawing completed and ready to tear out the 45 'prints'

From start to finish, the project took MONTHS and MONTHS to complete — just the sheet of 10 proofs took three months! I am happy they turned out so well. As usual, the production raised more questions than it answered and I have fuel for another year at least…

“Linda” 77×46 inch pen and ink drawing in spiral

Mike Lyon — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:21:00 +0000

Today, after 11 days non-stop drawing, I completed a large pen and ink drawing of Linda which sorta ‘marries’ my long interest in tiles and spirals with the squiggly cross-hatched drawings of recent years. I think it’s pretty successful and depicts my angelic wife (who doesn’t much mind my long hours in studio) with a vast halo – inspired mostly by Claude Mellan’s 1649 ‘Sudarium’ engraving (thanks to Jerry Vegder for showing it to me), to Ken Knowlton whose ca 1966 line-printed nude blew me away in the computer lab at the U of PA when I first saw it there in 1969, and to Chuck Close whose large gridded pencil drawn self-portrait shocked me at the Museum of Modern Art in New York around 1973.

So the ‘Linda’ drawing combines some new and some old ideas and techniques. For whatever it’s worth, I have been intensely interested in ‘new’ ways to communicate image and in process. I am so highly entertained for days on end by the various means at my disposal to precipitate thoughts and ideas into ‘reality’ — from my ‘mind’ in this instance to ink on paper! From abstraction to object and, it seems to me, so very directly! Process is relatively easy to discuss — aesthetics nearly impossible, so although ‘image’ is extremely important to me, the underlying process of ‘choosing’ my images is mainly unconscious or ‘felt’ and I just don’t have a clue how to talk about that. Process for me, however, is conscious and so easier to communicate. I suppose my images of people and other stuff will have to speak for themselves (LOL)!

Late in 2004 I began to think about the ‘spiral’. Spirals seem so… Infinite! Difficult to contemplate! Contracting to the infinitessimal, expanding to the infinite, mind boggling to construct and control! My great friend, Jerry Vegder, saw images of my earliest ‘machine drawings’ and pointed me to a Jacques Mellan (1598-1688) ‘Head of Christ, Sudarium’ engraved in 1649.

Now doesn’t this just drive you MAD? I mean, it’s quite a trick to hand engrave an image like this, a single line spiraling out from the nose with the width varied to produce the various values in the image, but HOW can one define such a procedure? After worrying this over for a while (four years?), I believe that I now have it all worked out! Although generating a list of movement commands to produce a spiral of any dimensions and number of rotations was quite a stretch for me (a simple interative application of trigonometric functions readily available in worksheets and programming languages), to really prove to myself that I had it more or less under control, I designed ‘Linda’ of spirals within spirals — approximately 3,300 ‘square’ tiles (each tile approximately 1×1 inches) pave a spiral in my ‘Linda’ drawing, and each of them is itself ‘spiraled’ to produce the values which eventually read to the mind and eye as a person’s face.

Although I ‘tried’ to constrain my drawing inside the ’tiles’ in order to leave a very narrow undrawn margin around each (I considered painting these margins with narrow lines of size and then gold leaving prior to drawing, but that seemed risky as Hell for a first attempt and I decided to leave that for a future work), but I required over 12,000,000 lines of movement code and there were many small errors in my calculations, so the drawing is (aren’t they all?) imperfect and the margins between tiles vary because a ‘few’ of my drawing lines escaped the tile boundaries from time to time.

Still, it boggles my mind to consider that this drawing (and most drawings, really) are produced moment to moment, the tip of the pen rolling from place to place leaving its slender black track as evidence of a long meander.

The image was designed in 10 layers as if it were a reduction print, beginning with the darkest areas in the image, each subsequent layer is ligher in value and includes the areas covered by previous (darker) layers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbuosJE_2fs

(short video showing darkest layer of drawing underway)

You can see (if you watch the video above) that the darkest layer is drawn with the lines ‘spiraling’ very close together. Each subsequent layer is drawn the same way, except the distance between lines increases as lighter and ligher value layers are drawn. In this way, the values in the image are produced by cross-hatching, in this case the lines are all variations on the spiral theme!

“Annette” 70 x 45 inch watercolor with pen and ink drawing

Mike Lyon — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:42:00 +0000

I don’t know that I so much completed this drawing today as simply called it ‘done’. Either way, I’m moving on! “Annette” is my mother-in-law and she does NOT appreciate this portrait at all — she thinks it makes her look too old and wrinkly (she’s only eighty-one years old, after all) and just hates it! But _I_ love this image of her even though I had trouble with the drawing from beginning to end! I composed the image during two and a half weeks in December and began actually drawing and painting it January 2, 2008. I stopped work on it this morning after 592 hours of continuous drawing and 34 Sakura Jelly Roll .3mm ink pens. The Sakura pens are advertised to write to the last drop, but that last drop usually happens LONG before the ink runs out — VERY annoying! Still searching for that ‘ideal’ writing instrument which leaves a permanent mark, very fine line, and writes reliably until the ink runs out. Not easy to find!

"Annette", Jan 27, 2008, 70 x 45 inches, watercolor with pen and ink drawing on Arches 300lb. hot press watercolor paper, collection: Barkley (the largest employee-owned advertising agency in the USA)

detail of "Annette" showing lines and colors

"Annette" next to "Crosby" on 2nd floor of my studio this morning