Heart of Gold emerged from a desire to reconnect with hand drawing and to produce my largest pencil drawing to date. During the production of this piece I was keen to achieve a strong sense of light and shadow.

The form of Heart of Gold is derived from a matrix of curvilinear abstract lines that spread out across the paper in all directions. The chosen forms are ‘chiselled’ out of the void using dark graphite pencils. For the lighting of the scene, I took inspiration from imagery captured during NASA’s Rosetta mission. The illustrated details depict a variety of science-fiction inspired references including spaceships and robots.

Further to the initial graphite base layer, the surface is shaded again, this time using colouring pencils. The dark areas are shaded in blue and the foreground details are shaded in yellow. Using complementary colours helps to create a clear separation between background and foreground. The final application (and perhaps the most precious one) utilises gold leaf foil to highlight and further enhance some of the key details. The gold leaf is applied directly over the selected areas, with colouring pencil forming the base layer.

Check out the print here and the alternate Fool’s Gold here.