studies & works in progress • page 3
(Click on an image to see the studies; click on the studies to see them larger.)
black & white
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The Audience
The black and white series was inspired by a dream in which I saw a movie shot in high-contrast film showing only black and white with no in-between grays. The first sketches for The Audience were attempts to portray a scene remembered from that movie, where all the elements — the people, their clothing and the surrounding surfaces — consisted of nothing but starkly contrasting black and white patterns. Sketch 3 for The Audience is only a few inches high, done many years after the much larger study 2 when I finally figured out that the drawing might be successful if I expanded it and allowed much more room around the central group of figures.
In the drawings of this series, the challenge is to define form not by outlines, but entirely by juxtaposition of black against white, pattern against pattern. Technically the drawings may appear to be done with white on a black surface. Actually they are the reverse: black India ink on white paper. The whites are where the paper remains untouched. They are done this way to achieve total black and white contrast however intricate the patterns, since no white medium is opaque or manageable enough to cover black thoroughly and precisely.
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