Notre-Dame de Paris

I can't believe it's been decimated by fire. This morning I thought about all the history behind it and drew this.

Inktober 2018 Day 31, "Slice"

Day 31 of Inktober, prompt word "Slice." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 31 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Slice." Ink and watercolor on paper. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: a profile of a head sits centered on a floral background. The profile, drawn in black and white, has a 3-D edge as if it is a slice of head viewed from a slight angle instead of a simple silhouette. The inside area where the brain would be is filled with a black and white image of eleven crows flying out of a bare winter treetop. The background is several richly colored realistic flowers on a black background: two red-orange ruffled tulips with leaves, a light purple-blue peony, two pale shell-pink peonies, two magenta ranunculus, and two reddish purple poppies with stems.]

Inktober, day 3 "Roasted"

Day 3 of the Inktober challenge which I previously wrote about here. The prompt word is, "roasted."

Day 3 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Roasted." Sadly my scanner struggles to reproduce the color of the highlighters I used; the original is black & white ink with neon orange (pink and yellow) highlighter ink. [Image description: realistic-cartoonish drawing with ink wash of a man and woman walking down a street. The man has his head down, the woman looks at him worried, they're holding hands. They walk in front of a wrought iron fence and residence with a window. It's black and white with a grid-like appearance because of the architecture. Superimposed and offset at a -30 degree angle is an orange line drawing of a nuclear bomb exploding and the man covering his face. The drawing extends beyond the borders of the black & white image.]

Sketch of my husband at a cafe

Sketch of my husband at a cafe, by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros

Travel diary, Amalfi

Breakfast in Amalfi, Italy, by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. It seems Italians don't "do breakfast" any more than a pastry and espresso. Which is the only reason we were drawn in by an ad for a "full English breakfast" obviously for tourists only. But when morning rolled around, it was nowhere to be found! We settled on a profoundly bad breakfast at this place, watching groups of English tourists carrying cottage-floral print umbrellas and complaining about small cultural differences, followed by German tour groups using sparkling new walking poles and wearing coordinating neon sport-raincoats, probably not intentionally. Luckily, we finally got our full English breakfast in England earlier this year.

Berlin is the Heart of Germany

A Berlin radio station asked for a design expressing the slogan, "Berlin is the heart of Germany," for postcards to be distributed en masse around the city. Here is what I came up with:

Design for "Berlin is the heart of Germany" postcard, by St. Rhinocéros / Ciana Pullen. It's a digitally altered watercolor sketch based on the city's iconic bear from the Berlin flag, with a slight Temple of Doom influence.

Charleston Airport

The little brick airport in Charleston, SC, years ago (they've since remodeled and done a nice job). Back in the day it looked a little like an Applebee's might if you removed all the "pieces of flair" from the walls, or maybe some sort of state-run laundromat.

Mermaid

Mermaid, signed -St. Rhinocéros

Berlin, July 2016

I couldn't make out what her tattoos were when I saw her on the street, so I gave her a full sleeve of my favorite junk foods.

Woman on the U-Bahn, Berlin

I saw this woman on the U-Bahn in Berlin. Signed St. Rhinocéros.

FKK in the Tiergarten

A field in the Berlin Tiergarten (rather like NY's Central Park, but calmer) unofficially dedicated to gay male nudists. There are other fields in the Tiergarten where any nudists may congregate when the weather is nice enough, as well as various lakes and parks around Berlin. FKK stands for Freikörperkultur ("free body culture") and is a holdover from former East Germany, where frequent casual nudism was the norm before reunification. Signed St. Rhinocéros

Buster Gets Out!

I'm excited to announce I've illustrated a children's book called Buster Gets Out! now for sale in my Etsy store and on the BookPatch online bookstore. Lucienne Stec and Thomas L. Stec, my husband's parents, wrote the story and it was a fun collaboration!

"Violet and her cat Buster are the best of friends. But one Fall day when Buster escapes into the yard, Violet must search high and low to find him!" Here are a few of the illustrations from the book:

An illustration by Ciana Pullen from Buster Gets Out! by Lucienne Stec and Thomas L. Stec.

An illustration by Ciana Pullen from Buster Gets Out! by Lucienne Stec and Thomas L. Stec.

An illustration by Ciana Pullen from Buster Gets Out! by Lucienne Stec and Thomas L. Stec.

An illustration by Ciana Pullen from Buster Gets Out! by Lucienne Stec and Thomas L. Stec.

An illustration by Ciana Pullen from Buster Gets Out! by Lucienne Stec and Thomas L. Stec.

Quentin Blake, illustration for The Witches

Quentin Blake, illustration for Rhoald Dahl's The Witches. In the film the central figure-- the witch leader-- was played by Angelica Houston. [Image description: Black line cartoon, probably with fountain pen, filled in with watercolors, of a woman standing akimbo with her arms thown up spread-eagled and five skulking bald witches in daydresses with matching handbags and gloves crouched around her.]

Atlanta: Part 2

You can read the Part 1 of my art trip to Atlanta, about Richard Misrach's photos, here.

On this day I was attempting to go see a performance piece at a MARTA stop by some cutting edge group. It was billed as a series of interventions in the city. It was also across town at rush hour in a place I'd never been. Laziness and fear of the new conspired against me and I was forced to go thrift store shopping instead, where I unexpectedly found Jesus:

"Inspiration," by Theodore Davis. [Image: a somewhat primitive watercolor painting of Jesus' head and shoulders on brown butcher paper or cardboard, framed in a thin plain gold frame. Jesus' chest is centered with his face nearly in three quarters profile looking up and to the right side of the painting. A stylized ray of yellow and white band of light descends from the top right corner to Jesus' face and a tiny lightning bolt runs from the light to his left shoulder. He has a yellow halo with tiny spiked sun rays around the edge, flat like early Renaissance halos. His robe is white with purple shadows for the drapery; his skin is left blank and his features are small and delicately drawn in pencil, almost like a woman in an ancient Asian ink painting. His hair and beard are dark graphic masses of squiggling black lines and dark brown paint. Except the face, drapery shadows and halo, everything is outlined in black. A water stain covers the bottom left two corner extending over his chest and shoulder, visible as a gradient to a dark organic outline that resembles faraway mountains in an old Chinese ink painting. The word "Inspiration" is written with pencil in jerky cursive over the white robe at the bottom left, and "Theo Davis" is written at a steep diagonal upward slope at the right edge above Jesus' shoulder next to the lightning bolt. The whole thing resembles traditional European Jesus paintings in certain ways, but is also primitively executed in others, creating an akwardness that words with the odd composition to be extremely engaging and elegant.]

It didn't even occur to me that I should stop and give it a closer look until I realized I'd already been staring at it for a full five minutes, and it didn't occur to me to buy it until I found myself removing the piece from the wall and thinking, "well if I regret the purchase I can always re-use the frame...." I flipped it over to reveal a cardboard tag written in ballpoint pen taped to the back reading,

"Name of project-- Inspiration
Medium-- Water colors and pastels
Name-- Theodore Davis-- Grade 12X
Frink High School"

and the price: $6.99

It is now hanging in my kitchen. I didn't think I'd ever have a picture of Jesus in my home, but I guess I didn't anticipate encountering this Jesus.

Mary Whyte, "Iron Man"

Mary Whyte, "Iron Man," 2000.  In the Gibbes in Charleston, SC. [Image: watercolor of older black man in his shop holding a hammer and leaning against a wall and table containing some unfinished ironwork. He's dressed all in blue denim. Sunlight rakes across the image. The image is very high contrast, with rich darks and bright whites.]

Ismail Merchant by Don Bachardy

Ismail Merchant by Don Bachardy. National Portrait Gallery, Britain. [Image: Watercolor portrait of an older white man's torso and head on an unpaited white background. Brushstrokes are blocky and show lots of white background through the facial features and blue stripes of his shirt or bathrobe, giving it a loose and ethereal yet graphically strong quality. The face and hand (which rests on a paper or book) are red and orange, contrasting with the blue/grey stripes of the shirt, the hair and the eyebrows. The figure moves diagonally up the page as he leans back, from the lower left-hand corner, where his hand rests, to the upper right-hand corner, where his head is.]

Japanese Portrait of a Man, 1502

Caption reads, Sesshu (1420-1506)? Daruma 1502. [Image: black & white print on yellowed paper of a very old Japanese ink painting of the head and shoulders of a man. Tall vertical format with his face halfway down the page and empty space above. His clothes are painted with a few thick rough brushstrokes while his head is painted in thin whispy lines. He is balding and has a beard and saggy, bushy eyebrows. His neck is wrinkly and his eyes bulge out and look sidelong at the viewer.]

Found this old German photogravure of a Japanese print for sale here.

Walter Knestrick & Red Grooms

Portraits by lifelong friends Red Grooms and Walter Knestrick:




Walter Knestrick, self portrait
[Image: realistic, though slightly primitive watercolor of man with grey hair, glasses, friendly smile, blue and white checked shirt, swirly dark blue background. Looks like a painting of a snapshot.]





Walter Knestrick by Red Grooms
[Image: scratchy, cartoon-y watercolor and pencil sketch of exaggeratedly emaciated, tall thin man with glasses consisting of two white circles and crazy hair. He stands off-kilter and wears a dark blue shirt. Piece is about five times as tall as it is wide, figure has giraffe neck and the arms and torso are about four times as long as they should realistically be. Brushstrokes are messy and expressive.]