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Pencil & Ballpoint Pen & Marker Drawing, 1988, 1 15/16 dia.
Man with Book, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen & Marker Drawing, 1988, 1 15/16 dia.
Man with Book {Detail}, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen & Marker Drawing, 1988, 5/16 x 1/2 inch
Man with Book {Detail}, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen & Marker Drawing, 1988, 1/4 x 3/8 inches
This is a miniature UNDER 2 INCH drawing rendered with a mechanical pencil holding 8H to 4B 2mm graphite leads, along with various colored ballpoint pens. The original inspiration for this image was a young man who had his Ambrotype portrait taken of himself at a skylight studio sometime in the 1850’s, which I eventually found at a secondhand store 130 years later. During this evolutionary phase of my technique I was attempting to decipher how small ballpoint pen could actually go and if you have not noticed, the eyes are actually smaller than the tip of the ballpoint pen and being that when drawing with a ballpoint pen, the ink actually flows from the reverse side of the tip, meaning out of sight, meaning that when attempting to actually draw something important, like an EYE, and you cannot actually see the location of where the ink is going to be placed, then the technical abilities and limits of the medium have been reached.
Of course using finer tips in conjunction with microscopes, such as is the case of Willard Wigan, means smaller works would be easily achieved. However, if Willard Wigan ever wants a real challenge to working infinitely small, let him try using your everyday pencil and ballpoint pen without the crutch of diamond tips and microscopes. And yes, I would gladly give his tools a try if the opportunity ever arose and by the way, the tools I use are laying everywhere around him now and have been his whole life.