All items by Drawing in Dark

Explaining myself one drawing at a time

I picked up a pack of charcoal pencils on a whim many years ago and fell in love. They allow me the fine detail of graphite but with a deeper, velvety black that gives such depth to my drawings. It's perfect for my biggest love, the darker side of my artwork where the monsters live. To be able to bring them to life, I need to constantly study the world around me and that's what connects all of my work - constant curiosity and observation, looking at textures, reflections, form and movement.

When I'm not in the studio I'm out with my camera looking for new inspiration. I photograph everything in a this-will-come-in-useful-at-some-point fashion, and it always does. For example, this year I did a sell out series of droplet drawings each with something different reflected in it that started way back when I lived in Cornwall. Raindrops on flowers in a garden caught my eye, I decided to challenge myself and see what else I could capture -trees, monoliths, the sea... A couple of decades on and I completed the set with iconic landmarks of the north east - up to and including the Tyne bridge :) That in turn led to thoughts of how I could use that to show my house monsters out and about and more reflections will appear in a new book I'm creating telling their stories.

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