Before the leaves turn in Western North Carolina there is a solid month of foggy mornings. Sometimes these persist after the leaves fall. Here you can see trees in various states of undress as the as the fog reveals them and their reflections in the French Broad River in the mountains outside Asheville.  This drawing will be available at Of Time and the River, the third annual art show to benefit RiverLink, held this year at Zealandia, overlooking downtown Asheville.

I’ve spent a year describing space in my drawings without the use of a brush. Exclusive reliance on pens means a variety of pens.  The drawing above was executed with goose and vulture quills and Japanese manga nibs.

Heavy pen use also means trying for an expressive line. There is a lot to be learned from using line to turn form in the portrayal of small objects in the foreground.  We’ve all seen apples on a tabletop rendered with close-hatched latitude lines.  I’m trying to build on the skills involved in so doing to depict aerial perspective with the use of line.

Inspiration for this way of working has come from nineteenth century etchings by people like Whistler and Hayden.  Many thanks to Julyan Davis, who steered me to some good nineteenth-century prints online.

Here is the Chowan River by morning light, treated in a similar manner with the use of straight lines to evoke the geometry of space.