Ben Sack is an artist that focuses on creating incredibly detailed representations of city-scapes in ink. Many of his pieces appear as though they were pictures shot from a bird’s-eye view or with a fish lens.

One of the works that immediately caught my attention was his Song of Pan, which includes a wide array of shapes and an interplay of negative and positive space that draws the eye towards the center. In the center appears a fictional metropolis and, as the viewer’s eye travels out towards the end of the beam-like arms of the city, the viewer takes in other city-scapes that appear to represent real-life city-plans. The piece includes blank spaces ingrained in floating circles and a mix-match of city-scapes that create a feeling of uneasiness (for me, anyways); the mix of shapes and detail can be overwhelming to take in all at once.

Ben Sack “Song of Pan”

The other piece that I found quite interesting was Quantopolis, which also provides the viewer with renditions of detail city-scapes, yet, here, Sack places the cities within what seems like 3-dimensional rooms created with checkerboard patterns. Sack creates a feeling of confusion through the utilization of both strict lines (conveyed in the pattern and the city-scapes) and soft, dark (ominous-looking) pockets of darkness.

Ben Sack “Quantopolis”

What really fascinates me about Sack’s work is the amount of excruciating detail he goes into to create beautiful renditions of cities and imaginative worlds. Though he does not tend to use color in his pieces (and every now and then works in a bit of sepia into his work), the lack of color creates an overwhelming feel of his compositions that invites the viewer to observe the detail close-up for the full-effect. I would like to incorporate the level of detail Sack includes in his work into my own portfolio because I am very detail-oriented and tend to work in monotone colors, which would push viewers to focus on the subject and wonder at the meaning of my work.