The Nature of Overwhelm
Master Artist: Caravaggio
Current Artist: Nicolas Delort
​With this piece, I wanted to explore a feeling that I was struggling with at the time of creating this piece. I was figuring out how I felt and what it meant to me, as well as figuring out how to explain that feeling to others. This is what I like to describe it as, overwhelming. The hawk represents the true self, solitary and glowing in the center of the piece. The crows are loud, screaming, and creeping in on the hawk, overwhelming it with their tendrils. Their figures are somewhat lost to the eye, because they aren't real. They are figments of the imagination, things that the mind likes to think and over-dramatize when it becomes overwhelmed. The darkness and tendrils come with the crows, and can overwhelm the hawk, which is the true self of someone.​​​​​​
9" x 12", micron pens, alcohol markers, brush pens, Ink, and colored pencils on marker paper.
References & Inspiration
A current artist that I took a lot of inspiration from was Nicholas Delort, who works a lot in ink pens. I loved studying the way he could convey such 3D forms in pen and ink, and wanted to take those techniques into my piece with the hatching on my hawk.
I wanted to take inspiration from Caravggio's paintings, which portray dramatic lighting and an emphasis on shadows. I like how this lighting gives a certain atmosphere and feel in his pieces​​​​​​​​​.
Sustained Investigation
These were some studies that I did of bird wings, using the current artist John Muir Laws's art book as a guide for the anatomy of the wings. I have two of his art books, and I have drawn a lot of inspiration and techniques from his work over the years. I focused on the groupings of feathers on the wings, and making sure that all of those groups were there. I also wanted to make sure that in my final piece, even if you can't see each individual feather of the crows, the silhouette of the wings make sense.
When starting this piece, I was very lost and confused about where I wanted to take my work, especially since I had never really explored beyond drawing animals and using pen and ink. Coming back into drawing, I wanted to stay in a medium that I was comfortable with. The three images of the dogs and the cats are previous pieces from November of 2023. I was doing commissioned pet portraits for people, and even though I hated drawing for other people, I loved using micron pens and the way I could get realism with hatching and cross-hatching.
The image on the top right is a small study that I used to re-familiarize myself with the medium before going into this piece, working on hatching and cross hatching around forms to achieve depth.
This was the evolution of my thumbnail sketch, I started to sketch out the composition on a a larger piece of paper, and I was struggling to figure out how to position the birds in relation to one another because I had trouble replicating what I wanted numerous times.
So, I switched to rendering my thumbnail digitally, which was much easier for me to understand visually, as well as gave me more flexibility in figuring out what I wanted for the piece.
In-Progress Photos
