Line King THE Artist Richard DeSpain recreates state’s landmarks in pen and ink drawings.


Photo by Kitty Chism


Story by KITTY CHISM For County Lines


all were done by the same homegrown artist, renowned for the beauty of his hundred pen strokes per inch to illustrate familiar landmarks around the state. Te artist is Richard DeSpain, 68, a longtime architectural draftsman for the state turned preeminent fine-line artist, famous for his deft drawings of some of the most notable places


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tep inside the Association of Arkansas Counties head- quarters in Little Rock, and you can hardly miss the 19 pen and ink drawings in the lobbies and on the office walls. Take a closer look and you will discover that


in Arkansas. His genius amounts to a keen eye, a steady hand and the sort of attention to minutia that allows him to depict with micro- scopic precision all manner of subjects, duplicating exactly their texture, light and scale. He’s never done an official count of his originals. But based on the hand-written, leather-bound ledger he started a few years back, he puts the number close to 2,000. Large and small, they are all elaborate compositions that focus a high magnification lens on famous buildings and bridges, military aircraft and working crop dusters, as well as outdoor landscapes and elegant interiors with all of their fractal planes — or, when his subjects


COUNTY LINES, FALL 2015


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