Aveacrixe Aðitriçal

The Aðitriçal Style

The overall thrust of the Rykami Arysani is experimentation in rapidity and expression, without a deep focus on detail. In August 1997, I pick up a set of Berol markers, limiting the palette to three near-primaries, three muted colors, and two methods for black. The red trends orange, the blue toward violet, and the green a sunny chartreuse. For the muted colors I use an apricot for heft, a peach for highlighted skin, and a light warm gray for general pale color. This is topped by absolute black, either by the hairline of a ballpoint pen or the pointed tip of a Sharpie. I’d never thought I’d be taking a Sharpie to a sketchbook, thinking of its wasteful bleeding and overpowering darkness. The subject could be laid out in ballpoint or technical pencil, so long as I didn’t dawdle and attempt to flesh out values with the pencil. This exercise is not about pencil massing and texture; we are not doing rucisaime. The drawings are to be rapid, energetic, and exuberant. Texture will be conveyed to some extent by the natural bleed of the marker, not any conscious manipulation of graphite.

I select a pleasant test subject, Aveacrixe, and draw her portrait rather liberally, without too much detail except in the eyes, which are not quite as well positioned as I hoped. Running with the concept, I model the skin, precarious because too much marker and the image is botched. There is no going back. The blue of her dress and the green background are laid in next. I color her hair gray, and go wild with the ballpoint. The last thing I do, with great trepidation, is hit the picture with the Sharpie. At the end, a satisfactory image, produced in twenty minutes! A love affair with the style lasts a week; some work in this style is done now and then, the limitations refreshing.

The style is named aðitriçâ (tracy) after a coworker.The first production of the style is noted on the left page as “Arebinâ” s5231a09, but that image did not use the select color palette.

Drawn 22 August 1997, Tayya 58a2, five dozen eighth phase (Ñixaþa-Alindðal Xrga, “life phase of Lindsay”), at Amherst.

This page last modified Thursday 5 April 2012.