Hoo's Realistic Drawings on Wooden Boards

Archive feature, first published 2018-10-03.

A drawing on wood begins with a surface that already has a character. Ivan Hoo uses colored pencils, pastels and ink on wooden boards, allowing the support to remain part of the image. The result can briefly confuse the eye: a drawn object seems to occupy the board, while its grain keeps insisting that the viewer is looking at a flat piece of wood.

“I always love to draw realistic art or artworks that tease the eyes and the brain,” says Hoo.

“By working on wood, it gives me a lot of dimension and ideas to create something close to reality, and it works really well with pastels, too.“

The board becomes part of the picture

Hoo’s interest in realism is not limited to copying the appearance of an object. The support gives him a place where something can seem to happen. A dripping effect, for example, suggests movement across a surface that remains still. That small visual event joins the subject to the board instead of treating the wood as an interchangeable background.

The illusion gains strength from an ordinary expectation: a real object placed on wood would affect the way the surface around it appears. Drawing can imitate some of those relationships. The pleasure comes when the image offers enough convincing clues for the eye to accept the object, before the knowledge of the medium catches up.

The artist’s remarks below connect his first anamorphic work with the idea of a drip. That gives the experiment a specific beginning, rather than presenting the illusion as a trick with no history. His choice of wood supplied both a material to draw on and a prompt for what the drawing might depict.

Grain, tone and marks in the board can coexist with the drawn detail. Where the surface remains visible, it anchors the picture to a real object. Where the illusion becomes persuasive, attention shifts towards the thing represented. Neither impression has to erase the other. The drawing works through the movement between them, offering the satisfaction of recognizing the method as well as the surprise of the effect.

A drip that stays still

This is why a close view can be rewarding even after the illusion has been understood. The boundary between a drawn feature and the supporting surface becomes easier to examine. The viewer can appreciate a carefully placed mark without losing the larger image it helps produce.

The feature describes Hoo working from still-life arrangements and photographs he made himself. Those sources give him control over the subject before it reaches the board, linking observation and composition to the later drawing rather than making detailed technique the whole story.

“By working on wood, it gives me a lot of dimension and ideas to create something close to reality, and it works really well with pastels, too,” Hoo told Bored Panda. “I started to think of ideas and draw things that we could see ‘happening’ on a piece of wood, so the very first idea that struck me was the dripping effect. That was my first anamorphic work.”