Studying Conch Shells To Inspire Black and White Abstract Drawings

If I am being totally honest I can not remember if I started to doodle and I said, hey this drawing looks like a Conch shell and I ran with it.  Or, I was studying the patterns and twists and turns of a Conch shell and incorporated these spirals and textures into my work.  Whichever way this drawing happened, it is a reminder how helpful it is to look at the world around you. You will find so many intrinsic marks. lines, shapes and patterns in nature that you can mimic in your own way in your abstract art. This drawing was done with a simple Uniball Vision black pen on a small white sketch pad. The drawing has a nice combination of darks and lights, a repetition of shapes spiral lines and a sense of three dimension or depth because of the way the lines were created. 

Visiting The Blog of Hannah Rebekah Straw: Making Marks in Black & White is Therapeutic

Hannah talks about how therapeutic it is to quiet the mind by using mark making with just black and white and leaving out color. Although I do not know what medium Hannah uses,  I  have spent many hours with a sketchpad and a Uni-ball Vision pen which is water and fade resistant) just mark making into the night. The beauty of the Uni-ball pen over the Sharpie pen is that it doesn't knock you over with a smell.  Hannah gets much more complex in her black and white drawings, using texture and different levels of pressure, movement and "exaggeration" of her marks. Take a look at her other B&W drawings https://hannahstraw1.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/mark-making-black-and-white/

Black And White Abstract Design Using a Uniball Vision Pen On Paper

Long before I developed my comfort level with "real" art supplies, I would "doodle" on my lap using a black waterproof Uniball Vision pen. One day, while on an interview (art related), the Director who was was meeting with me said I needed to call my work "Pen and Ink" and graduate to "real" products such as special ink pens and better paper. Ha ha, now almost a decade later, I am learning not to listen to too many voices that tend to provide static which just interrupts true creativity. Art tools, one will come to appreciate are very personal. The real wisdom comes when you realize that you are truly making art for only one important critique and that is of course just YOU, the artist!