For over 35 years I specialized in pen and ink stippling. I developed my own method of layering color. It is not pointillism, nor is it based on math or even the graded dots in most black and white stippling. My work in based in seizures.
When I was a child, I had a kidney issue that caused high fevers and convulsions. In fact, I was born with a "double-collection" system, having four kidneys and the normal amounts of everything else. At some point, after either having a seizure or recovering from one, I wanted to just sit and color. Well, I was dizzy and "
woooozy" as my mother would say, so instead of
coloring with the normal crayon methods of a child, I started making dots. Dots didn't hurt as much.
Many years into my career, I went to the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, long-distance, before long-distance was online, and combined my love of plants and the earth with my dots, and obtained what is equal to an American Associates Degree in Horticulture. That led to many years of detailed pen and ink stippling of plants.
I recently said I was going to challenge myself and go back to using a crow quill nib for most of my writing. Well, I have remembered that before I used a crow quill, I made dots. So stippling is really earlier
for my life than the simple crow quill.
My need to express in color after a seizure meant I didn't put the crayons away when normal coloring hurt, I made dots. And I am still making dots.
Below is a photo of an American Flag that I will be completing in stippling. There is a major difference between the Flag and plants, as far as layering. All of my plant depictions have yellow in them. Working with only the red, white, and blue of our Flag leads to the challenge of developing depth without that "opposing color" to play
of off. Different shades of blue?
or red?
or maybe just true colors? We will see-
The sketch above is in pencil on Aquabee Super Deluxe Sketchbook paper, with a layer of gouache coating the paper.
