Call me Ishmael.

11 x 8 inches
colored pencil and ink on found paper
August 5, 2009

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

11 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint, ballpoint pen and colored pencil on found paper
August 7, 2009

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself.

11 x 7.5 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
August 11, 2009

"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."

10.5 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, collage and ink on found paper
August 23, 2009

Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler.

11 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
August 25, 2009

Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas — entire strangers to them — and duelled them dead without winking...

11 x 8 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil and ink on found paper
September 5, 2009

"...Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowel's wards."

11 x 8.5 inches
ballpoint pen on paper
September 17, 2009

His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.

7.75 x 11 inches
ink on found paper
September 28, 2009

They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.

11 x 8.5 inches
colored pencil and ink on found paper
October 1, 2009

...take my word for it, you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old school, rather small if anything; with an old fashioned claw-footed look about her.

7.75 x 11 inches
ballpoint pen on found paper
November 5, 2009

"Thou Bildad!" roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the cabin. "Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn."

11 x 7.75 inches
ballpoint pen and ink on found paper
November 16, 2009

"Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames!"

7.75 x 11 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
November 17, 2009

...and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.

7.75 x 11 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
November 29, 2009

It was now clear sunrise.

7.75 x 11 inches
ink on found paper
December 8, 2009

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man...

10 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
December 17, 2009

"I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."

7.75 x 11 inches
colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
December 19, 2009

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air...

10 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil and ink on found paper
December 21, 2009

The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered.

10 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
December 23, 2009
 

Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers.

8 x 5.75 inches
colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
December 26, 2009
 

Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread - an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts...

11 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
December 27, 2009
 

Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.

11 x 7.75 inches
colored pencil and ink on found paper
December 29, 2009
 

Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby.

11 x 8 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil, crayon, ink and marker on found paper
January 15, 2010

BOOK I (Folio), chapter I (Sperm Whale).

10.75  x 15.75 inches
ink on found paper
January 16, 2010
 

The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters...

10.75 x 15.75 inches
ink and marker on found paper
January 17, 2010

BOOK I (Folio), chapter IV (Hump Back).

10.75 x 15.75 inches
ballpoint pen on found paper
January 18, 2010

"...I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."

8 x 5 inches
colored pencil and ink on found paper
February 9, 2010

...a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them...

11 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint, ballpoint pen and ink on found paper
February 22, 2010

The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden gleamings.

6 x 10 inches
ink on found paper
February 27, 2010

And of all these things the Albino Whale was the symbol.

8.5 x 7 inches
ink on Bristol board
March 6, 2010

First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the body.

7.75 x 11 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
March 11, 2010
 

Those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone...

11 x 7.75 inches
ink and marker on found paper
March 27, 2010

...with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: 'Stand up!' and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.

10.75 x 8.5 inches
colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
April 4, 2010

 

Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together...

15.25 x 10.75 inches
ballpoint pen and ink on found paper
April 6, 2010

...the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties...

15.75 x 10.75 inches
acrylic paint, collage and ink on found paper
April 11, 2010

Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.

10.75 x 7.75 inches
ink on found paper
April 12, 2010

"Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced.

10.75 x 7.25 inches
colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
April 28, 2010

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there was promise in the voyage.

8 x 12 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
May 1, 2010

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like.

12 x 9 inches
marker on found paper
May 26, 2010

And all the while the thick-lipped Leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake...

11 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, charcoal, colored pencil, ink and pencil on found paper
May 28, 2010

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth...

10.5 x 8 inches
ink and marker on found paper
May 30, 2010
 

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.

7.75 x 10.75 inches
ink and marker on found paper
June 2, 2010

"When you see him 'quid", said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."

7.75 x 10.75 inches
colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
June 8, 2010

...this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along...

8.5 x 6.75 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
June 20, 2010

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings.

8.5 x 5.5 inches
ink on found paper
July 3, 2010

On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume — a shirt and socks — in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.

10.75 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
July 13, 2010

"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"

"Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship; "well, that's the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and string 'em along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough."

7.75 x 10.75 inches
ink and marker on found paper
July 20, 2010

There is more character in the Sperm Whale's head.

8 x 6 inches
ink on found paper
July 22, 2010
 

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out our poor Tash by the head.

8.75 x 5.25 inches
colored pencil, ink and marker on watercolor paper
August 3, 2010
 

The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.

8 x 9.5 inches
ink and marker on found paper
August 6, 2010

At this juncture, the Pequod's keels had shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his foreign rivals.

10.75 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper

It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described.

11 x 8.5 inches
ink and marker on paper
August 12, 2010
 

Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.

7.75 x 10.75 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
August 29, 2010
 

This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay out his full term below.

8.5 x 7 inches
ink on Bristol board
August 29, 2010

He is both ponderous and profound.

10.75 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
August 31, 2010
 

Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld...

8.75 x 8.75 inches
ink and marker on found paper
September 4, 2010
 

Almost universally, a lone whale - as a solitary Leviathan is called - proves an ancient one.

7 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil and ink on Bristol board
September 19, 2010

I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.

II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.

7 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint, collage and ink on found paper
September 21, 2010
 

...which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a textbook on that subject.

11 x 8 inches
acrylic paint, charcoal and pencil on found paper
October 2, 2010
 

Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt.

5.5 x 8 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
October 5, 2010
 

Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs.

6 x 9.5 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 10, 2010

"Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles."

15.5 x 10.75 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
October 25, 2010

"...the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple."

15.5 x 10.75 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
October 26, 2010

"But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all a magnet!"

11 x 8.25 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
October 29, 2010
 

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

10 x 6.25 inches
ink on found paper
November 7, 2010
 

For Pliny tells us of whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length...

10.75 x 15.5 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
November 10, 2010

In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

15.5 x 10.75 inches
acrylic paint and pencil on found paper
November 13, 2010

Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty.

11 x 8.5 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
November 16, 2010
 

So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.

10.75 x 7.75 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil and ink on found paper
November 26, 2010

At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face.

9.75 x 6.25 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
November 30, 2010

It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together...

7.25 x 10.25 inches
ink and marker on found paper
December 4, 2010

For that strange spectacle observable in all Sperm Whales dying - the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring - that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.

9 x 7.25 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
December 4, 2010
 

So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.

7.75 x 8.25 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
December 8, 2010
 

"Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The St. Elmo's Lights (corpus sancti) corposants! the corposants!"

All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.

11 x 7.5 inches
acrylic paint and ballpoint pen on found paper
December 8, 2010

"Aye, aye, men!" cried Ahab. "Look up at it; mark it well; the white flame but lights the way to the White Whale!"

10.75 x 15.5 inches
acrylic paint, ballpoint pen and ink on found paper
December 9, 2010
 

"I'll have me - let's see - how many in the ship's company, all told? But I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate, Turk's-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun!"

9 x 7.5 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
December 23, 2010

"...forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep!"

12 x 8.25 inches
acrylic paint on watercolor paper
December 31, 2010

"Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it - ye can't escape - blow on and split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your trump - blister your lungs! - Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his water-gate upon the stream!"

6.25 x 10 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
January 10, 2011

...Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.

12 x 8.25 inches
ink on watercolor paper
January 11, 2011

...the White Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made.

10.5 x 7.5 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
January 11, 2011

"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man - In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone - all good angels mobbing thee with warnings; - what more wouldst thou have? - Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh, - Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"

8.25 x 12 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
January 15, 2011

...Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming forward...

8.25 x 12 inches
acrylic paint on watercolor paper
January 20, 2011


 

Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it - it may be - a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

10.75 x 15.5 inches
ink on watercolor paper
January 22, 2011

Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.

"The ship! The hearse! - the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!"

10.75 x 15.5 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
January 23, 2011

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

12 x 8.25 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
January 23, 2011