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