A Return to Pencil and Ink on Bristol

Cultivating the Bloodline is a new drawing that grew out of personal discomfort with the idea of reproduction – in a physical sense, but more deeply, in terms of the continuity of lineage. Its fueled by awareness of the complexity – and fragility – of human bodies and minds.

The cold detachment of the mother here marks a sense of obligation over compassion, and the many tubes and wires represent a behavioral system that binds those who enter into it. There's a clear sense of ritual as well – an ancient practice that carries on between generations.

As with all my art, I took the kernel of my feelings around the topic and gave it room to grow within a frame of dark surrealism, emphasizing elements of mysticism and horror to express my discomfort.

In this post, I'll talk through the pencil and ink stages of the art, and then I'll share color in a separate post later.

The Process for Cultivating the Bloodline

I began sketching with a rough idea in mind of the woman holding the baby. Using a 2H drawing pencil on an 11" x 14" piece of Bristol, I worked out the core shapes of the figures, then allowed other key visual pieces – the wires, cloth, and planets – to develop naturally around them.

Once I had the outline of the essential elements in place, I went back over the art using a pair of mechanical pencils to add shadows, hatching lines, and fine details.

This is what the final pencil art looked like:

Once I had the pencil lines laid out in their entirety, I went to work on ink using a 102 crow quill pen nib and round brushes with a bottle of black India ink.

The drawing style for this piece was something of a return to form for me, and it's useful to compare the crosshatch-heavy style here to the image I made immediately before it, called Moments After the End.

A couple things to notice:

• Moments After the End is completely free of hatching and contour lines. This means that every ink mark is either delineating a form or creating a shadow.

• It's also a larger drawing with a much more involved composition.

Here's the full ink artwork along with a detail for reference.

Moments After the End

I enjoyed working in that way and I specifically felt it helped give the art a sense of calm and clarity. But I knew I wanted a rougher, more visually aggressive look for Cultivating the Bloodline.

For comparison, look at the difference in the total number of lines being used to describe each form:

After I had finished inking, I erased all my pencil lines, then scanned the art into Photoshop. There, I made a few minor edits to some of the lines and adjusted the size of the woman's head, which I felt had ended up too large in the original drawing.

From there, it was on to color. I'll talk about the process of color separations and rendering in its own post further down the road, once it's ready.

More to come on this one soon.

---

I share process videos, sketches, and behind-the-scenes work as new pieces take shape. If you'd like to see the next stages of this world as it's built, you can find me here:

Instagram | TikTok | Newsletter