Andrey Poletaev Lugansk, Ukraine
2015 FEATURE article ARCHIVE menu: Nov2014~Nov2015
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2015 PICKS page ARCHIVE menu: Feb~Nov2015
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APRIL 2017
Lined Up Kai & Sunny London, England
While so-called 'hyper'-realist ballpointers working with conventional figurative imagery labor to hide their linework to present the illusion of halftones, linework is front and center in the ballpoint manifestations of Kai & Sunny...
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pictured : My Eye On You crop, 2016. © Kai & Sunny
2016 PICKS page ARCHIVE menu: Dec2015~Dec2016
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MAY 2017
Mixed & Matched Andrey Poletaev Ukraine
Time. The bane of all ballpointers. To photorealist ballpointers, in particular, most of that time is spent working carefully to avoid making mistakes, another nemesis. Andrey Poletaev is the quintessential photorealist ballpointer...
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pictured : MM-2017-54 crop, 2017. © Andrey Poletaev
Allan Barbeau Dublin, Ireland
SEPTEMBER 2017
Benjamin Sack Leesburg, Virginia
Similar to cartographers of old aboard wooden ships, I executed my drawing at the same pace of the MS Amsterdam’s peregrination of the Earth...
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Mappa Mundi, 2017.
© Benjamin Sack
FEBRUARY 2017
Lennie Mace Tokyo, Japan
The idea for the drawing—a Doonesbury-like line drawing of the White House festooned with Trump Taj Mahal casino neon—had been in my head since during the campaign...
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Trump White House, 2016. © Lennie Mace
OCTOBER 2017
Alberto Repetti Genova, Italy
Almost all of my ideas come from shapes suggested by nature... I flowed those ideas into this work, spatially and intellectually re-elaborated... A reinvention of reality...
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The Elemental Landscape, 2017.
© Alberto Repetti
2016 FEATURE article ARCHIVE menu: Dec2015~Dec2016
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DECEMBER 2016
Lennie Mace RETROSPECTACLE Tokyo, Japan 1994-2004
By 1994, Lennie Mace had made a name for himself as an illustrator and had been exhibiting his ballpoint pen artwork in New York annually since 1990. ...
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pictured : The Longer The Drool... 2005. © Lennie Mace
MAY 2017
Riiko Sakkinen Pepino, Spain
This drawing is included in my exhibition Closing Borders at Serlachius Museums, Mänttä, Finland. The exhibition is about Europe fortifying its borders...
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The Least Powerful Passports, 2016.
© Riiko Sakkinen
JULY 2017
C.J. Pyle Indianapolis, Indiana
This piece was started around 2011 and about a third of the way to completion was abandoned. It sat in my files until inspiration hit and it was finished in 2015...
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A Chorus of Horace, 2016.
© C.J. Pyle
DECEMBER 2014 Shane McAdams Brooklyn, New York
Ballpoint pen art without the ballpoint pen? That and more
from Shane McAdams, who literally removes the ball point
from the equation by "blowing", milking or otherwise extracting ink from ballpoints and magic markers toward artistic ends...
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pictured : Cloudslinger, 2014. © Shane McAdams
2017 FEATURE article ARCHIVE menu
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APRIL 2017
Serhiy Kolyada Kiev, Ukraine
My new ballpoint pen drawing is one of my series about Kateryna the heroine of Taras Shevchenko's poem and painting. Shevchenko is our national poet and artist, lived in 19th century...
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Kateryna in Zurich, 2017. © Serhiy Kolyada
SEPTEMBER 2017
Liner Notes C.J. Pyle Indianapolis, Indiana
If you happen to sense a musical quality in the ballpoint and mixed-media drawings of C.J. Pyle, your instincts are more finely tuned than most. Pyle has led something of a double life, splitting his time between a drawing board and a drum kit ...
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pictured : Lawrence of Newark crop, 2017. © C.J. Pyle
AUGUST 2017
Explaining Wai Pongyu Wai Hong Kong
The term 'East-meets-West' is regularly applied to Eastern artwork exhibiting Western influence, affectations or aspirations, but it doesn't apply here. In most respects, the work is neither East nor West. Just art ...
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pictured : A Moment of Truth 51 crop, 2016. © Pongyu Wai
Since 2014
NOVEMBER 2017
Chen Zhen Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Appearance of the fetus here is a metaphor for all things before birth, in the parent. Even if the human species of same appearance gave birth to twins, although the same outward, the consciousness is their own and different...
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Individual, 2017. © Chen Zhen
Dave Warshaw San Diego, California
AUGUST 2017
Nicolas V. Sanchez New York, NY
When drawing in my sketchbook during my commute, I'm not really thinking of anything very specific. My mind drifts in and out of being present with my surroundings...
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Sketchbook, 2015~2017.
© Nicolas V. Sanchez
2017 PICKS page ARCHIVE menu
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Holly Cappello Portland, Oregon
NOVEMBER 2017
Teacher's Pen PENNAMES Ballpoint Art Instruction
It used to be that the creative use of ballpoint pens was merely a by-product of classroom boredom... Classroom boredom surely still exists, but I can't vouch for what youngsters of today do with it ... Read the full archived feature
art : © África Fernández de Castro Hoyos, 2017, cropped.
FEBRUARY 2017
Think In Ink Benjamin Sack Leesburg, Virginia
Imaginatively mapped out satellite- and bird's-eye views of lands far more interesting than the offerings at Google Earth, giving new meaning to the term urban planning...
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pictured : Jupiter Fugue crop, 2016. © Benjamin Sack
JUNE 2017
Ballpoint Art Trent Morse BOOK REVIEW
Just as so many presumptuous or naive ballpoint prodigies tripped over each other to have you believe they 'came first ', so came the race for First Place in formally documenting ballpoint pen art history...
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pictured : cover art, Untitled crop, 2014. © Thomas Müller