Ghost Variations

2019–2020 | Drawings

During the past two years I’ve been experimenting with automatic drawing, primarily as a tool for creating shapes for the Fugues series. These Ghost Variations evolved from those experiments.

Ghost Variation #1
Ghost Variation #1, Blue pencil, graphite, ink and wash 36 by 54 cm, 2019.

Each drawing began with rapid, nonobjective marks made using a blue colored pencil (the “non-repro” kind favored by designers) on cold pressed watercolor paper. I repeated the process using an eraser as a stylus, and reduced those marks to “ghosts,” lines of intermittent weight and resolution. Another layer of blue lines, then more erasing, then two layers of graphite lines, erasing again between each. The resulting cloud of lines suggested a complex array of overlapping shapes.

I used a layer of ink wash to further define some of those shapes, and let others remain implied. I added one or two more layers of ink wash, plus some ink lines to direct the overall composition.

These are a selection of works — click here to view the series in its entirety on Behance.

Ghost Variation #5
Ghost Variation #5, Blue pencil, graphite, ink and wash 36 by 54 cm, 2020.
Ghost Variation #10
Ghost Variation #10, Blue pencil, graphite, ink and wash 36 by 54 cm, 2020.