Welcome to Pete Swartz Art, a web site devoted to pencil drawings using nature as inspiration. I am interested in the details found in plants, animals, and of course humans. I'm also interested in artifacts we mold through the process of everyday living, like gloves and boots. I treat each of these models of nature like a human face or figure--which of all subjects possess the simplest yet richest potential for expression.
Rather than working from photographs, I prefer drawing from life, so that the eye itself rather than the camera lens selects each detail to be recorded. And I enjoy using pencil because of the emphasis this medium places on line and shape. The absence of color focuses the viewer’s attention on what is essential about the subject, yet provides for ample play of shadow and shade.
Nature’s detail provides the source for my drawings, where function melds with beauty in ways that always seem fresh.