All illustrations by Matty Liot. If you are interested in purchasing any of these images please e-mail us at contact@downtheline.info

These illustrations represent my practice, yearning and aspirations for drawing as an art form and means of expression and recording. Much like a photographer, I find an inspiring location, subject, backdrop or landscape, and record it. Using mostly graphite, charcoal, and colored pencil. Having avoided ink, as well as paint on canvas for most of my life, I intend to head in this direction as I ease away from my comfort zone, pencil on paper. The colored pencil drawings are my first step in this direction, as with an ink sketch, entitled ‘San Juanico II’ and the marker drawing of ‘La Mision’.

In order to compliment or add variety to the barrage of photographic images that are pushed on us daily, I complete these works and invite the viewer to take a break from the near perfectly focused and edited works of the professional photographer and his modern ‘camera obscura’, and appreciate a picture of imperfect and wildly erratic lines that combined, evoke a realistic feeling or mood, including my own and the subject(s) in front of me. Taking away the emphasis on the near perfect image, focus, set-up and near perfect lighting that photographers typically seek after, gives one a chance to appreciate more directly the appeal of a handmade ‘print’ of various marks and lines that put together, create or communicate a unique ‘vision’ of what the artist saw, or was inspired by.