Albert Benjamin Thompson is an American visual artist. He currently has a full-time career as s professional tattoo artist focusing primarily on black and grey realism but also lends his hand to illustrative color pieces, American traditional and neo-traditional styles of tattooing.
With a full-time career and fatherhood, Thompson has managed to carve out some time from his day for his own personal artwork unencumbered by deadlines, bills that need to be paid and the expectations of clients.
His current focus is the ballpoint pen medium. Choosing a blue pen primarily for its familiarity by people of all walks of life but especially for its common use in formal settings such as offices, schools, institutions etc..
“ In today’s day and age people look at a work of animation or illustration created with a digital toolset and can enjoy it sincerely but they don’t really know how much work goes into that and rarely if ever can give it the reverence and appreciation it deserves.
However, most people have used a blue ballpoint pen, doodling on a piece of paper while talking on the phone or even just to jot something down. It’s a familiar tool, a person can get a relatively good idea of what goes into a drawing done with a ballpoint pen. “- A.B. Thompson
Never straying too far from his favorite subject, (the human face) Thompson aims to penetrate deeper than the flesh. Seeing the spirit beyond the form and calling it forth to reveal itself.
Whether it is observing life or observing his imagination Thompson seems to move where the wind takes him. Pacing himself with carefully rendered portraits or explosive scribbles and sketchbook doodles of zombies and misfit characters.
In 2005 Albert Benjamin Thompson’s book HUSK, a collection of illustrated vignettes, comics, short stories and journal entries won a Xeric grant for self-publishing.
Extremely beneficial for young creators at the time, the Xeric grant was established by Peter Liard ( Co-creator of the popular franchise The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and was aimed at helping visual storytellers with the financial burden of getting their projects off the ground.
Husk is 96 pages of illustrated stories written and drawn by Thompson in an altogether different style and medium-Cross hatched using a black micron pen.
Reviews-
“Self-taught artist and Xeric winner Albert Benjamin Thompson’s Husk presents an intriguing assortment of poetic prose, sequential art and pin-up illustration characterized by abstraction, surrealism, odd humor and existential pain. Mostly pen and ink work, Husk juxtaposes finely detailed landscapes of desolation with comical stories about the lost and confused.
While the emotional range doesn’t vary much from angst and despair, and the visual style reinforces a sense of futility and hopelessness, Husk manages to avoid monotony and depression with sly wit and a flair for irreverence.”
- Acer Bloodgood