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 24: Dizzy

Inktober 2019, Day 24, prompt word, "Dizzy." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen [Image description: The picture plane is broken into several overlapping strips containing different images, like a collage. It's a black and white pen drawing. In the main center image a man and woman hold hands as the man leads her down a narrow outdoor stairway in an old city, much like a back alley. Under their hands and arms is another image strip of beer and wine bottles, and over them bisecting the drawing diagonally is a thin strip showing a winding tree-lined two-lane highway viewed from above with a car on it. On the right another image shows a fancy old apartment building with a domed roof and electrical wires with birds on them, and on the left is another image of shadows from blinds in a dark room. In a thin strip near the top is a hand and iPhone on a black background.]

Inktober 2019, Day 22: Ghost

I struggle with "less is more," especially with ink, so I was especially pleased with the light markmaking in the background of this.The marks on the shirt also look sculpted, which was a cool effect. This was, once again, the effect of poring over some old Anders Zorn drawings. I used a reference photo for the back of my own head, because believe it or not I don't see it that often.

Inktober 2019, Day 22, prompt word, "Ghost." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white realistic drawing of a woman walking down a banal institutional hallway, perhaps of a school or hospital. The woman is viewed from the shoulders up to mid-skull, and from behind and to the side. Her other shoulder is out of frame. On the visible shoulder sits a tiny duplicate version of her, wearing the same striped shirt and hairdo, facing backward (toward the viewer and facing out of frame). She rests her face on her hand and looks bored. In the hallway background there is a doorway, an empty metal chair, and some fluorescent lights in a drop ceiling.]

Inktober 2019, Day 19: Sling

Inktober 2019, Day 19, prompt word, "Sling." Dip pen, ink wash, wax crayon, and gel pen, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: a view straight down a grocery store aisle at waist-level. Fluorescent lights shine overhead at regular intervals. Instead of a ceiling, there is a black galaxy full of stars with a cloudy milky way running down the center. The shopping cart flies off into the galaxy behind the fluorescent lights in one direction and a woman in jeans and a tee flies off in another, upside down in a limp position.]

Inktober 2019, Day 18: Misfit

Inktober 2019, Day 18, prompt word "Misfit." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white drawing, slightly cartoonish but mostly realistic, of a homeless man. The perspective is from slightly above and almost fish-eye. He's sitting on the ground on some cardboard boxes, while a meaner, more aggressive duplicate of himself stands over him, grabbing his lapels and yelling. The duplicate is slightly see-through, with the tiles of the wall behind him showing through. Foreshortened well-dressed legs walk past in bottom quadrant of the drawing.]

Inktober 2019, Day 16: Wild

Another imaginary pseudo-Classical creature. I don't know where all this Classical influence came from this Inktober, since I'm not an especially big fan of ancient Greece or Rome. I think it might have been the day at the art museum in Barcelona that did it.

Inktober 2019, Day 16, prompt word "Wild." Dip pen and ink wash, 8 x 11 in., by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: realistic black and white pen drawing of the head of a roaring lion. Instead of a mane it has hair-like snakes, like Medusa. The snakes are coiled in a way that echoes the movement of the lion's head as he roars.]

Inktober 2019, Day 15: Legend

The idea for this drawing popped into my head fully formed, apparently straight from my subconscious with no provocation. I'd like to see these creatures in motion. They seemed like they should be vaguely Viking or Celtic, so I did a little research on how those folks looked. Then I looked up weight lifters so I could get an idea of fat(ish) but strong bodies. The Vikings from TV and movies all had Hollywood type bodies, but I just couldn't imagine someone with Megan Fox's physique popping out of the top of a walrus. This is actually an issue I have with The Little Mermaid as well. Every other sea mammal has a nice thick blubber layer, and so should she.

Inktober 2019, Day 15, prompt word "Legend." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: A crowd of walrus centaurs (human on top, walrus on bottom) holding lit torches crowds a beach. The atmosphere is darkish and misty. They appear to be rallying. A male is in the foreground with a beard and man-bun and a few markings painted on his chest, face and shoulder. A female is just behind him with a shaved head except for a braided mohawk. The figures behind them are blurrier. Two centaurs holding torches recline on a rocky outcropping in the background.]

Inktober 2019, Day 14: Overgrown

I recently visited Barcelona and spent the day at the Museo National de Catalunya; I think the armless classical statues stuck in my mind and produced this drawing.

Inktober 2019, Day 14, prompt word "Overgrown." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: black and white pen drawing of a Classical Greek style bust of a woman. Her arms are cut off at the shoulders, as many sculptures are, and a cluster of around six extra hands is growing out of each of her shoulders. She has a simple crown or headpiece, like Diana. The background is blank.]

Inktober 2019, Day 12: Dragon

Inktober 2019, Day 12, prompt word "Dragon." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11. by Ciana Pullen. [Image Description: black and white pen drawing of a subway train plunging underwater. The front of the train reads, S41 Ring. Its headlights illuminate the dark bottom third of the image. Bubbles flank the train, up to the surface of the water, where the ripple effect of the water's surface viewed from underwater is drawn in wavy groups of lines. Another section of the train dips into and out of the water further back, like a snake or the Loch Ness Monster.]

Inktober Day 5: Build

I had fun designing this bust of Victory, combining all the Classical symbols of victory into one messed up Victory-monster.

Bust of Victory. Inktober 2019, Day 5, prompt word "Build." Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen [Image description: Drawing of a sculpted bust in Classical Greek style. It's a woman's neck and shoulders with a man's bald head wearing laurel leaves behind the ears. One small wing protrudes from his forhead, squishing one of his eyes and brows, and the other wing protrudes from his nostril. His mouth and chin are a lion's muzzle. He stares ahead of him, to the right out of frame, and the background is plain white.]

Inktober 2019 Day 2: Mindless

I picked jogging back up this past year, maybe the longest continuous streak of (voluntary) fitness for me, ever.

Inktober 2019 Day 2, Mindless. Dip pen and ink, 8 x 11 in. by Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white ink drawing of a woman jogging along a sidewalk. The sidewalk is floating in the sky, high above a landscape of rolling hills, farms and a coastline. Faint graffiti flanks the sidewalk, as if tagged on a building bordering the sidewalk which isn't visible.]

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 2018, Day 24 "Chop"

Day 24 of Inktober, prompt word "Chop." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 24 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Chop." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white drawing of the head and shoulders of a woman. She holds a knife with a sphere impaled on the end of it, which she examines with a disinterestedly skeptical expression. The sphere contains an image of a bird flying over treetops, as in a crystal ball or a parallel reality contained within the sphere. The sphere is the light source; the background is black and the figure is shaded in high contrast. Somewhat realistic style.]

Inktober 2018 Day 21, "Drain"

Day 21 of Inktober, prompt word "Drain." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 21 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Drain." I shamelessly stole the pinecone head idea from a phenomenal 1920s Dada / surrealist artist named Claude Cahun; she once wore a costume pinecone or fungus on her head and took some photos. I intended to come up with a more meaningful object with which to replace the head, but after serious effort I was unable to improve on the pinecone. [Image description: black and white ink drawing showing a woman with a big pinecone for a head who has just dropped to her knees and is reaching blindly for her human face/head, which has somehow come off and is melting and dripping through an invisible grid that forms the plane of the ground. The figure is top left, the face is bottom right, and she reaches toward the viewer. She wears shorts, sneakers and a loose cropped T-shirt. Her face is conventionally pretty and calmly smiling but one eye has dripped through the grate. A swath of abstract black brushstrokes behind and to the right of the figure highlight that area of the illustration. The style is graphic-realistic, not cartoony.]

Inktober 2018 Day 20 "Breakable"

Day 20 of Inktober, prompt word "Breakable." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 20 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Breakable." Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white ink drawing of a woman walking on a beach. A more detailed rectangular section in the upper center of the page shows a woman in a sweatshirt and jeans walking near the waves viewed from far away. A piece of driftwood and seaweed sits half buried in the sand. Beyond the frame of that rectangular section is a series of five overlapping contour line drawings of a nude woman walking, looking up and looking down and ahead, walking forward and, with perspective, moving diagonally from upper left to lower right toward the viewer. The larger version of the driftwood also makes an overlapping appearance beyond the rectangular section. The horizon line and edge of the waves extends also beyond the section forming a triangular shape because of perspective. The overall style is realistic, not cartoony.]

Inktober 2018, Day 1 "Poisonous"

I mentioned that I wasn't able to scan the first Inktober image because it was too large. So I photographed it and I'm finally posting it now.

Day 1 of Inktober, prompt word "Poisonous." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 1 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Poisonous." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: a black and white ink drawing with ink washes. A black rectangle covers most of the page, set to the bottom left of center. Inside that frame is an ambulance with open doors, viewed from the back looking straight in, slightly from below. A stretcher sits halfway out of the ambulance. A man floats or flies out of the ambulance slightly above the viewer and his head extends out of the black frame at the top left. He has two heads; one looks back at the ambulance, troubled, and the other looks straight ahead, determined. He holds a backpack. The interior of the ambulance is very brightly lit, and one door opens beyond the black frame. The dual light sources make the face very high contrast.]

Inktober 2018 Day 15 "Weak"

Day 15 of Inktober, prompt word "Weak." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 15 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Weak." Drawn in the mirror (except the goat head and bottomless abyss, obviously, those I image-searched online). Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. This is meant to capture that feeling in the throat and chest when you feel like you want to cry, but you either don't have the energy or privacy to do so. [Image description: black and white finely shaded drawing of a woman's head and chest. There is a goat head awkwardly squeezed under her chin emerging from her neck, stacked like a totem pole. There is a black hole or nebula filling the space of her upper torso. The top of her head extends off the top left of the page and she looks down at the viewer with a slack face. There is blank white background space in the upper right and mostly blackish space around the nebula filling the silhouette of her chest and shoulders.]

Inktober 2018 Day 11 "Cruel"

Day 11 of Inktober, prompt word "Cruel." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 11 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Cruel." By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: a black and white line drawing on a white background. On the left is a large figure that appears as if it's assembled out of several pieces collaged together. It's head is a giant screaming infant head, it has one naked beefy arm and muscular pectoral clenched in a fist, its body and other arm is in a black cartoonish business suit, and one of its feet is a white foot in a sandal that looks like a Roman sculpture. To its right on the bottom of the page is a black square with a small upside-down figure drawn inside with its extremities extending outside of the black frame. It has a baby's body and an elephant's head that is turned to look toward the screaming baby figure. Standing en pointe on top of the black square is another figure with a large baby's head (or doll's head) in profile looking calmly at the larger screaming figure, with 5 ballerina legs attached directly to the head. Each leg wears pointe shoes and is lifted in ballet attitude except one which extends down and balances on the black square. Four diagonal lines stretch across the top of the piece over the screaming baby's face and converge in the eye of the ballet feet figure, like rays of light refracting from a prism or lines radiating out from a central point. The overall look of the pieces is clean and graphic.]

Inktober Day 5 "Chicken"

Day 5 of Inktober, prompt word "Chicken." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 5 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Chicken," by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Ink with dip pen. [Image description: black and white realistic style drawing with shading and crosshatching. The top half is a man's face, turned 3/4 toward shadow and looking back over his shoulder in horror with bulging eyes. The bottom, where a mustache would be, is instead 8 or so human legs attached under his nose, running to the right and away from the viewer, kicking up a cloud of dust.]