Leaf Ghost #9

For this one I’ve returned to cross-hatching ink on paper, a style I’m really starting to love. Not only does it produce great results – very much akin to the marginalia that spawned the whole project decades ago – but all those repetitive lines are sort of a meditative experience.

And speaking of those old notebook doodles, this time I added something I used to do all the time but haven’t yet tried in the Leaf Ghost series: a drop shadow. Just a slender line along the bottom edges of the leaf.

While trying to avoid turning this into a De Stijl debate about diagonal lines, I should note that this represents a philosophical departure from previous entries. Up until now all the ghosts have been 5x7 grids of squares subdivided by hues and brightness levels. The combination of these separate blocks of light and color create the illusion of a leaf.

The shadow stands apart from the grid, spanning the underlying shapes as uninterrupted lines. The result looks much more like a physically real leaf, though of course that too is an artistic illusion. Now rather than an transparency lying directly on the background, it hovers above the surface. And the transparency now seems like a lie. Instead of seeing the background tinted through the leaf, we see the surface of the leaf itself that just happens to coincide with what’s behind it.

I’m bothered by the resulting loss of “ghostliness.” But I really love the change it makes in how it looks. As this is only the ninth entry in the project, I imagine I’ll do some more with and without the shadow before I settle on one approach or the other. But it wouldn’t surprise me to see the new element become a staple of the series. And before I tried it, that actually would have surprised me.

I returned to the mixed media paper I’ve used for most of the ghosts. The pen is a Speedball 513EF. This time the background color is Winsor and Newton Black Indian Ink.

After the pencil work was done, I started with the shadows:

And then added the background:

I was briefly tempted to stop at this point, because the negative space makes such an interesting leaf all by itself. Perhaps a future drawing will cut off without a foreground.

The foreground is Winsor and Newton Brilliant Green.