Sea Ivory, Hebrides

Generative software, drawing robot, Bic ballpoint on Aquafine hot pressed watercolour paper. 30 x 34cm unframed. One off drawing (this is not a print).

This drawing is made of six layers of standard Bic ballpoint pen with different weights attached. There are nearly 3 million lines in this drawing, totalling approximately a mile of ink. It took two days to draw in total. The drawing is based on a photograph I took of Sea Ivory lichen on a Hebridean Island off the west coast of Scotland.

I am interested in the uncanny effect of using one of the most humble and familiar writing implements in the world - the Bic ballpoint - to create a drawing with so much density of ink. The juxtaposition of the familiar ink and the digital photograph leaves a sense of ambiguity. Is this a drawing or a photograph?

For each drawing sold, I will donate £5 to Trees for Life, to offset carbon and support the rewilding of the Scottish Highlands.

N.B. The ink in Bic ballpoints is robust, but not immune to UV light, so please mount this picture away from direct sunlight to avoid the colours fading. If possible, it would be good to use UV filtering glass in any framing.