A Note On The Process

These are not lithographs, screen-prints, or woodcuts.  They are ink portraits.  Though they are drawn and assembled from a rather lengthy process, they should yield the impression that they are made very quickly or at least have the scent of technology.   

First I find a photograph of the subject that I like; I’ve always been concerned with how painting has been influenced by photography and vice versa.  I make a black and white photocopy of the photograph to simplify the image; one can do the same thing by squinting at a black and white portrait under a very strong light. 

I make a few minor notations on vellum in light pencil.  I then draw the photograph as if I was going to do a "realistic portrait", but I don’t typically shade much beyond two degrees.  I pay special attention to the darkest lines.  Once I have a drawing that resembles the photograph, I begin making connections and simplifying the image with a lacquer-coated graphite pencil, continuing to make notations while squinting.  This technique allows me to break the image down to as few marks as possible.  I then erase the pencil markings with kneaded rubber so I am left with a topographical study of the photograph.  This sort of chiaroscuro, less violent than a Rauschenberg erasing, helps shape however the lines must move to create a portrait.  With a very fine piece of sandpaper, I scuff the graphite lines so that I can better control the ink.  Eventually, the portrait appears.

I find that each portrait takes between four and six hours.  I’m sure I could make them in under an hour with today’s technology.  I wanted to return to drawing after a number of years and I wanted to make an art book that I could afford to print.  After I completed a portrait, I found that it pulled me further into the work of that particular artist or writer.  I like to view this book, with quotations on facing pages, as a collection of the hundred greatest influences on my artistic and personal existence in this absurd universe.  I hope you make your own list and that it is different from mine.  I have structured the order of these hundred people as memoir.  Consider it the only way I could imagine presenting a personal essay.  These are one hundred people you should know

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