Artist Extraordinaire!
These prints have been created using 'pointillism', a method which involves a painstaking task of creating an image on paper with a professional Indian Ink drafting pen, dot by dot!
The result is that when done well, the picture can end up looking almost like a Black & White photograph.
All the shading is created by varying the number of dots per square centimetre of the picture, which means that some of these pieces have millions of dots in them, and have taken hundreds of hours.
Clinton sometimes combines adding lines to his Indian Ink art, whatever it takes to get the image looking the way he sees it in his minds eye. His attention to detail and patience, you will probably agree, are phenomenal.
Many of these originals on display here are available for sale - the price will be given on application via email.
People ask Clinton "What made you chose pointillism?" - well in some ways, pointillism chose Clinton! In the early days he was doing line drawings and sketches in pencil and non-durable biro etc as a hobby. It was a passion for copying what he saw, onto paper. Friends and family members recognised a growing skill that was obviously innate, as is often the way with dyslexics. They convinced him that his sketches were worth selling. This led him to getting better pens, and he chose to get a few Indian Ink pens so that anything he did would last were he to sell them. Clinton chose the Rapidograph pen - one commonly used by architects and artists - which came in different sizes, offering different pen stroke widths.
About this time he began to travel around New Zealand with his partner, living in a van. This continued (in increasing sizes of vehicle) over the next 7 years or so. The compact lifestyle meant that the pens were the best media to use and by now he had developed a passion for Black & White (and there was no real room to have paints, brushes and all the rest!).
Within a year or so of starting with Rapidograph pens, he began experimenting with achieving realistic shading by using dots, as lines didn't achieve the detail he wanted. Some of these transitional pieces are noticeable by their mixed content of lines and dots. Eventually he began to do pieces almost entirely in dots, and this became a passion for some time as he enjoyed the almost photo-realism that could be achieved by this style. The hardest aspect was the incredible length of time and focus it would take to complete a piece. Now however, whenever he returns to doing pointillism (which he no longer does exclusively) he tends to use a combination of lines and dots more often than not.
For the last ten years, Clinton and his partner have lived in a small house in a small town in the South Island of New Zealand. This has given him the opportunity to experiment with other media, and he is now working with colour pastels, acrylics, occasionally oils, but most often sculpting in Limestone, wire and wood etc, as shown on this website.
Clinton has had no training, nor has he studied the arts - his dyslexia precluded that. Everything he does is self taught and relies on his innate abilities.
His greatest sadness is that his art has not offered a very realistic way of making a dependable income - as he says - "it's still only a supplement to an income," even though he has sold hundreds of pointillism pieces (mostly commissions), sculptures and other artworks over the last 20 years.
All the pictures displayed here are available as prints and can be
ordered immediately by application to the artist via email at the price
of $35 per A3 or $25 per A4 (plus postage & packing).
Each print that is sold will be authenticated with the artist's signature before shipment.
We hope to have online purchases via credit card available soon.
Here are some examples of Clinton's pointillism. All pictures are copyright Clinton Herdman.
Click on the thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture.
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