Futuristic Wastelands in Charcoal

I love the rich velvety black I can achieve with charcoal and I use erasers as mark making devices to lift the powdery black pigment and reveal progressively lighter gray tones beneath, kind of like pencils in reverse. 

It can be a notoriously messy medium but that's a relatively small price to pay for the wonderfully full bodied images you can create.

These are some of my enigmatic landscapes.

Alternating Currents: charcoal on gray Rives BFK heavyweight paper, 44"x30"

Posted Runes: charcoal on gray BFK, 30"x22"

Roll the Bones: charcoal on gray BFK, 30"x22" To make this drawing I cropped a tiny area from the cover of Rush's Roll the Bones CD.

My version is nothing compared to this original image by Canadian artist Hugh Syme, who has painted virtually every Rush cover since their third release, Caress of Steel in 1975. He has also designed cover art for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Styx, Aerosmith and others. Having been nominated 18 times for the Juno Award (the Canadian Grammy), Syme has won the coveted trophy 5 times, including Best Album Design in 1992 for this album, Roll The Bones. Now, isn't art history fun? lol