Ballpoint Pen Artist Draws Unforeseen Conclusions

When Andrew Boynton first puts a Zebra F-301 ballpoint pen to a blank sheet of drawing paper, he never knows where his artistic imagination will journey. It could arrive at the inside of a hollowed tree that overlooks a mysterious landscape, or end up as the contours of a woman's body.

"I usually start with an idea or image and then create the drawing around it without knowing exactly what I'll draw," Boynton said.

The Long Beach resident has used only ballpoint pens and colored pencils to create dozens of intricate, perspective-laden drawings. Several are depictions of surreal worlds; others are of scenes so realistic that art-lovers may be tempted to step inside them. Sometimes Boynton creates strictly black-and-white worlds, while other times he'll fill them with multiple colors. Occasionally his drawings are hybrid of the two.

One example of this is titled The Gallery, a drawing that leads your eyes down a long corridor, done only in black on sand-hued paper, with a color-filled stained glass window of a sun-lit, waterside villa backed by emeraled mountains. This linear, three-dimensional piece speaks of Boynton' bachelor's degree in architecture.

"I began this drawing like most others, with nothing specific in mind," he writes of The Gallery on his website. "Out came a perspective of a naturally lit gallery space with virgin walls."

In each drawing, he incorporates subtle images that are sometimes outlined by the main subjects. Chalice in the Morning Sun, for instance, features a vase with a rose set on a table next to a candle, and within these and other subjects are the contours of a woman's profile and acoustic guitars.

"In this piece the word chalice refers to both the woman's face hidden in profile and also the many vases present," Boynton writes. "The spherical candle and tripod bowl share spaces as sound holes for guitars."

In A Flag of Every Color, an American flag that he sketched days after 9/11, two white stripes are extended to replicate the Twin Towers, while a teary eye, airplanes, a heart and other images replace the 50 stars.

When he was studying architecture at Buffalo University in the mid-1990s, Boynton was in a band and kept a notebook for lyrics on which he would draw concrete images that represented each song. "From there I just bought a bigger pad and started to draw," he said about the origins of his artwork that evokes the influence of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher.

Since then, Boynton has completed some 40 drawings. Today, when he's not at Ruby Tuesday working as a manager and bartender, he spends up to 10 hours a week just drawing.

He recently started making prints and postcards, displaying them everywhere from Art in the Plaza at Kennedy Plaza to the Coffee Nut Café on East Park Avenue to the sidewalks of Greenwich Village.

Melissa Rice was walking through a fine arts festival in Long Beach in June when Boynton's drawings at his booth arrested her attention.

"I was immediately blown away by the intricacies in each and every piece," said Rice, who purchased a few prints.  "I found myself staring at each piece trying to find every small detail ... The attention to detail and the use of dimensions was astounding."

Boynton is humbled by such responses to his work and by where his imagination and talent has taken him. "I love pursuing it," he said of drawing, "and surprise myself with what I come up with."