Sven-Aleksander Mantsik

• Ballpoint
• Tutor: Liina Siib, Maria Erikson, Eve Kask

I take a lot of notes and sketch a lot of plans, but hardly any make it to completion, if they even make it out of the drafts. I use pens for this rather than pencils – for its consistent and unerasable line. The initial inspiration for this artwork was entirely the elegant build of a ballpoint pen and my many notebooks filled with pen sketches.

A roll-on deodorant works nearly the same. I wanted to reproduce the pen and paper in a bigger scale, “drawing” with roll-on deodorants filled with oil paint, on offset printing paper. Unlike the pen, the line ends up a lot more unclean and takes a while to dry. Unclean, like “controversial” and “political” topics are often considered, but which I want to create discussion about in many of my artworks.