This Is Not a Photograph: A Rose Drawn Dot by Dot

At first glance, this white rose could be mistaken for a black-and-white photograph. In reality, it’s something else entirely: a drawing made only with dots of ink. Every petal, every shadow, built slowly through the patience of stippling.

The rose is drawn entirely with stippling — a technique that uses thousands of tiny dots instead of lines or shading. By layering ink dot by dot, areas of shadow deepen while lighter zones are left open, creating soft tonal shifts across the petals. Unlike pencil shading, which relies on the movement of a line or stroke, stippling builds tone without direction. The result is a surface that feels softer, almost photographic, while still carrying the quiet presence of the hand.

This single drawing took more than 200 hours to complete. The process is slow and meditative, sometimes requiring hours to build even a small section. Yet it’s in this slowness that the flower emerges: delicate in tone, bold in form, suspended between the photographic and the handmade

This rose is one of a series of stippling works exploring flowers in meticulous detail.

You can see the full piece and others from the collection here

Tulips

After some time away from social media, I’ve returned to share a quieter body of work — a series of tulip photographs made over the past several months. While still life has always been central to my practice, these images mark a subtle shift: not in subject, but in medium.

Instead of graphite, ink, or pastel, these works are photographic — though still grounded in the same careful observation and slow-making that shapes my drawings. The camera becomes another way of seeing: not a shortcut to detail, but a tool for distillation — to frame a fleeting moment before it collapses or curls away.

Closed Form

The first image in the series.

A tulip just before it begins to yield. The petals are tight, the light soft. There’s no grand performance here, only quiet tension. I wanted the image to feel like a held breath.

What Holds a Moment

There’s something grounding about the still life tradition — the control, the pause, the intimacy. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to pay attention in a world that moves quickly.

This series isn’t about celebration or bloom. It’s about form held together just long enough. The moment before collapse. The poise within decay.

I’ll share more of these images over the coming weeks, along with a few thoughts on the process and what I’m aiming for with the prints.

If you’d like to be notified when the prints are released, you can sign up to my newsletter or follow along on Instagram.

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Thanks for reading,

Louis

One million dot photorealistic pen stippling drawing of a leaf

Patience and precision pays off 🖋️🍃 Excited to share my latest artwork - a photo-realistic leaf drawing made entirely of one million dots using fineliner pens and stippling technique. It took a lot of focus and dedication, but I'm proud of the end result. Hope this piece inspires you to keep pushing your boundaries!

Red Rose Stippling Drawing

I thought I would try out the Pigma Micron pens that I use in some of the other colours that they make. Here is a red rose. The colour is really great, it is hard to show in the video but there is a type of golden shimmer to it when the light hits from certain angles. Would you like to see more colourful drawings? There are plenty more pen colours to play with.

Jules de Balincourt: If Trees Spoke and We Listened

David Altmejd Magic Loop at Stuart Shave Modern Art