My Journey As A Pen And Ink Portrait Artist

Today, I focus primarily on Pet Portraits, and People Portraits in pen and ink. But my 45-year journey to this point has been a path that, to me, makes sense. Read on to disover what brought me here, and what drives my passion for pen and ink.

Like many artists, my journey in drawing began at an early age. I attended Horace Mann Elementary School in Tonawanda, NY, where our resident genius art teacher, Arthur Giles, noticed my fixation with drawing and taught me how to draw in perspective. I was hooked. My fixation turned to obsession, and there was no looking back.

Note to parents: art is essential for your kids. That early ah-ha moment with perspective and its inherent use of observed geometry seemed to prepare my brain for math and science. So much so that, in addition to art, my studies led me to physics, engineering, and computer science.

Fast forward to being married with young children, and a career as a computer engineer, I became somewhat annoyed with many of the picture books we were reading to our kids. Except for Maurice Sendek's, where the wild things are. I wanted to see more stories that celebrated wild fancies of imagination as he did. So I got busy and illustrated three children's books that encourage gleeful imagination. I had an agent, and we had some publication deals, but due to the erratic economics of children's books at the time, not much came of it. 

Fast forward again to eight months ago, I left a 24-year career as a creative leader in marketing to circle back to my first love, drawing, and my passion, pen and ink. In fact, as I announced my departure from marketing to my LinkedIn network, I posted a panel from one of my children's books. The story follows a boy who discovers an odd bottle on the beach and imagines what could be inside. I used the bottle as a metaphor for not knowing, at the time, what I would do next. Rather prescient, don't you think?

Sometimes, I kick myself -- pen and ink is hard, there's no undo, there's no splashing a bit of paint over mistakes, there's no eraser, every line matters, and no line is not seen. And to make matters worse, that early rewiring perspective did to my brain, combined with engineering studies, has pushed me to always strive for detail and realism.

But to me, pen and ink is the most beautiful medium. The dramatic contrast of black ink on white paper speaks to my essence. It's the drawing medium of the old masters who used a dizzying array of line styles and a mystifying economy of marks to create stunning works of art.

A finished piece stands out with eye-catching contrast and compliments any decor. 

And finally, I've never been in the habit of making art for myself, I want others to experience what I feel with pen and ink. There are only two things that give me greater joy than learning of my customers' thrill when they unpack a finished pet portrait - those two things are my wife of 42 years, and our dogs.

So that's me. That's what drives me. It's what I love doing. Let me do it for you.