I am interested to lay down my thoughts regarding these 3 images that i selected to post from the said book (as per the blog post title). The first one denotes a strong sense of Opacity and effect of Realism. I thought it was a wood cut or a print. Its ink, yet this ink goes beyond blackness, darkness. And the same occurs with the flat white sky. Then the carved out hill and then the figures we see. There is something so much outside the world we inhabit in these non tonal works. The clear cut divide of the black and the white.

The Second is the Japanese Wood Cut Print. The colour is there but the Line effect is remarkable. It makes you see the image with such clarity, opacity, transparency. The design, patterns on the dress are seen so distinct, separate in action as a layer. The white lines on the black clothed drapery. The Folds, the hair, everything has such flow and meaning to it. What and when and how it is revealed, highlighted, toned down, brightly coloured, layered etc. The work is so black and white and drawing as it is coloured. Its the wood cut, the art where it lies originally. The carved lines with that meaning, that intention of making this work, the artist carves it and thinks through the colours to get to this reproduction. I think, we as artist who work in Drawing should shift between drawing on paper and wood cut prints and back.

Work 3 is where I see myself at today. And for the past 20 years or so. It has lines which layer themselves on the screen of the paper. Black comes and goes, washes of ink, come and go. Come and go means that I see the work being built up from the first line which is drawn, then things come and go, they get built up, crossed over, built up even more and then keep building in layers of thick and thin lines, over lapping, under lapping. Then we see the Artist blocking, just completely blocking the paper with ink. That same solid effect that we saw in the first work, but here is far more challenging as a work. What generated interest was, maybe for the artist the forms being created generated themselves and the artist followed suit. So you have that bridge of letting drawing lead you. That i felt in this last work. Especially when i see how imagined forms came into being. That same push and pull between Semi abstraction and Representation. Design, patterns can do that. They can be tied up inside a Jaali work of a marble / stone window of a Mughal Architecture building and then also be let free to guide you when you repeat them or they repeat themselves.

Beardsley is like a good introduction to what Pen and Ink can do.

10:16 pm.