Collection: Horror Vacui Series

1. a fear or dislike of leaving empty spaces, especially in an artistic composition.

This was a series that was approached during my high school career, which was in fact the first series I ever embarked on. This particular style of artistic expression was freeing as an artist, because no single piece was planned out ahead of time (aside from the selected animal theme).

The more I started doing these, the more difficult it became to try to make everything fit together like a puzzle, however, the more rewarding the turn out was. Each motif was inspired by improvisational placement of other motifs surrounding it. The idea for these motif drawings was to emphasize the contrast between positive and negative space, whereas there was little to no negative space within each composition.

"Mystical Creatures" by Pasquale Giovanni (the first motif drawing that started the Horror Vacui Series in 2010, created in adobe illustrator)

Originally, the series started with a class project where there was no animal theme, and no further instructions--other than to just fill in every part of the picture plane with animal creatures. I chose to do mystical creatures as I was more gifted with those types of illustrations, and the reaction that I got inspired me to do more of these motif drawings featuring different types of animals; all animals from different parts of the world, and also through out time and history. 

This series evolved into more than animal themes. There is in fact a few more that I have not uploaded here, even one that features all of the astrological signs. This one has taken about ten years to complete because I kept starting over, due to the amount of detail involved. This will make the last piece in the series, and it will be big.