Inktober 2019, Day 26: Dark

I've seen a lot of illustrators create atmosphere-monsters, and I've been wanting to give it a try myself. They create a lot of atmosphere at the horizon (clouds, smoke, the haziness of distance) and slightly delineate the monster's form (usually tall and lanky, a giant robot or massive skeletal creature), but leave the eyes blank and white (or in color, if it's a color illustration) so they glow. Having the atmosphere at the horizon makes the monster look super-tall, towering above skyscrapers. Here's an example by Canadian and French illustrator Nicolas Delort:

NOT my drawing. This is by Nicolas Delort, a Canadian and French illustrator. It shows the type of bright-eyed atmosphere-monster I'm talking about.

The funny thing is, the original illustrations from War of the Worlds used the same conceit for the killer robot Martians over a century ago. Maybe Henrique Alvim Corrêa even invented it for the novel. I ran across his illustrations a few years back while illustrating for an exhibit in Scotland about the history of sci-fi and architecture. Here's Corrêa's take in 1906:

NOT my drawing. This is a 1906 illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for War of the Worlds.

So I went to create my own atmosphere-monster to express how, walking down a city street in dank weather, you feel both omnipresent connection with the city at large, and simlutaneously part of a tiny huddled microcosm under your umbrella or in a cloud of light from a shop window. I started, naturally, with the atmosphere. I chose a rainy city street at twilight, a time which seems somehow even darker than night when it rains. However I got so into the foreground and rainy street scene that I wish I'd cut the monster out altogether so the focus was on the foreground. Oh, well. This might be a drawing I retool in the future.

Inktober 2019, Day 26, prompt word, "Dark." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: cityscape showing a line of pedestrians with umbrellas crossing the street over a few clouds of billowing steam emerging from manholes. Behind them is a row of cars silhouetting them against headlights. On either side are tall buildings. The sky is dark and it's raining. The people's silhouettes and the headlights create black and white striped reflections on the wet pavement. On the right side, a corner shop window is illuminated. In the background, between two distant buildings and against the sky, the outline of a humanoid monster peers at the people and reaches out. Its eyes are blank white hearts.]

Inktober 2019, Day 8: Frail

I was very satisfied with the way the background linework turned out in this. I tend to go high contrast and get the darks to be very dark, but I was looking at some drawings (or etchings?) by Anders Zorn and wanted to try some more hazy, atmospheric effects with ink. I used a few photos of a local Rococo building and some hazy photos of New York in the early 1900s to cobble together some references but I didn't draw this from a photograph.

Inktober 2019, Day 8, prompt word "Frail." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: realistic black and white pen drawing of an outdoor scene at night or twilight in a hazy rainy atmosphere. In the foreground is a dirt or gravel path with a big puddle, and a leafless tree branch with two tangled balloons dangling near the ground and blowing around. One is popped. In the background is a hazy domed Rococo building with lit windows reflected in the puddle. A formal hedge and row of trees, stretches from the building toward the viewer.]

Inktober 2018, Day 27 "Thunder"

Day 27 of Inktober, prompt word "Thunder." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 27 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Thunder." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: realistic black and white drawing of a thunderstorm. A small landscape takes up the bottom eighth of the image; towering storm clouds take up the rest of the space. A tiny single-wide trailer home on blocks sits on a wooded hill overlooking a valley and hills. Far away at the horizon a tornado has formed. In the middle ground a huge cloud is raining into the valley, creating a sweeping diagonal swath of lines and light from the bottom left up to the top right of the image. Several puffy black horizontal clouds are silhouetted against the rain. Behind the raining cloud, and to the right and behind the hill and trailer home are towering puffy cumulus clouds. Lightning jumps between two clouds. Shadows form on the ground from the clouds and the composition is overall dappled black with finely lined shades of grey. The storm appears to be moving toward the tiny trailer home.]

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.

Rain

It rained here Tuesday or Wednesday, quite a lot. By coincidence my brand new waterproof beach/running shoes had just arrived the day before. How convenient. I wrapped my camera in several sandwich bags and headed out into the torrential downpour; at its highest the water reached nearly to my knees, a disgusting melange the ingredients of which only those familiar with Charleston will infer. I showered immediately afterward. It was immensely satisfying.

A man walks through ankle-deep water with a pink umbrella.

A pickup truck up to its fender in flood water drives through a flooded street.

A man with an umbrella walks through a deserted tourist attraction.

A firetruck slugs through a flooded street.

A street sign in a flooded street wisely warns, "Do Not Enter."

A man in a hat walks through the rain in front of a historic building.