Greg Lewallen’s life-size rhino fills downtown Waco gallery

If you’re Waco artist Greg Lewallen, it’s a 7-by-12-foot birch plywood panel, a layer of white gesso, an art studio with tall walls, 37 black-ink ballpoint pens and 125 hours.

Plus, of course, the intangibles of a vision and the focus to finish the work.

The result of Lewallen’s effort, an oversized ink drawing titled “After Albrecht” but informally nicknamed “The Beast,” goes on display Thursday at downtown Waco’s Washington Gallery.

The artist, a 15-year drawing and two-dimensional design senior lecturer in Baylor University’s Department of Art and Art History, will talk about his wall-dominating piece at 6 p.m. at the gallery.

The rhino seems a major change in scale and subject for Lewallen, known for his intricately detailed, vibrantly colored studies of insects, but still is in keeping with someone who grew up with a love of the natural world.

Lewallen, 67, and his brother Rodney collected and documented reptiles and amphibians growing up in Waco — the Mayborn Museum still holds part of their collection — and the two ran an import-export insect business out of Fort Davis for several years before his brother’s death.

Washington Gallery owner Alan Scott repeated the second question when Lewallen told him earlier in the year of an idea he’d been kicking around. Scott said he’d display the work and seek a buyer for it and that got the ballpoint pens rolling.

Capturing a rhinoceros’ rough, textured skin in a 2D drawing was Lewallen’s artistic challenge and he employed a scribble technique, making areas light or dark through the density of random lines. He initially contemplating doing a rhino with a stipple technique, creating form through tiny dots. “My wife told me, ‘Are you crazy? You won’t live long enough to finish it,’” he said with a smile.

While Lewallen usually relies on a technical pen with a fine point for his smaller drawings, he used Zebra brand ballpoint pens with a medium point to make “The Beast,” draining 37 pens of their ink in the process.

Working in one of Baylor’s large art studios — “It was too big to go under my bed,” he quipped — Lewallen worked from top to bottom on his rhinoceros, which measured 5 and a half feet at the shoulder and 11 feet long. What viewers see is a third version. Lewallen started over after an initial sketch proved too small, then again when a redesign to lift the rhinoceros’ head instead made it larger and not in proportion to its body.

A close look at “After Albrecht” shows remarkable detail, from direct and reflected light playing at different intensities on the animal’s sides and wrinkled skin to tiny eyelashes and single hairs on its tail.

“None of it was difficult. It was just tedious,” he shrugged.

Even so, the project had a hypnotizing effect at times. At night, Lewallen sometimes would lie in bed thinking about what he’d spent hours on during the day. “It was beckoning me to get back to it,” he said.

The oversized drawing took Lewallen about 125 hours spread over 20 days to complete. His title, “After Albrecht,” attaches a bit of wit to the finished work: 16th century artist Albrecht Dürer, known for his intricate, detailed wood etchings, was the first known Western artist to draw or paint a rhinoceros.

The German artist never saw a rhinoceros for his 1515 print, however, and relied on word-of-mouth descriptions for what became a somewhat fantastical beast with a small horn atop its back resembling a unicorn’s horn, three-part hooves and skin resembling plated body armor.

As viewers will see beginning Thursday at Washington Gallery, Lewallen’s rhino is far more realistic than fantastical.

Gallery owner Scott said seeing the finished work, after regular video updates on the artist’s progress, was “a proud moment” for him. “After Albrecht” will later move to Rhinory, a Fredericksburg winery with a small rhino reserve and a white rhino named Blake, for display.

Lewallen already has his sales pitch ready. “It’s the world’s only life-sized, ballpoint pen drawing of a rhinoceros,” he said.