Attention to detail has led a local artist to painstakingly put together a series of striking and intricate drawings for her debut exhibition.

Suzy Manton opened ’Lines’, her first public display of art work, at Mother T’s, in Laxey, this week.

The collection consists of line drawings, each one created with care and precision out of thin black ink lines.

Among the pictures are drawings inspired by some of her favourite bands and several animal portraits, which feature flowing and graceful, yet richly detailed animal forms created by many groupings of lines.

It is an exhibition of drawings that, in some cases, has been years in creation, with one of her drawings taking more than three years to complete.

’I would say that each of my pictures has taken around 40 hours to complete,’ said Suzy at the opening of her display .

’However, there is one of a fish which must have taken me about three years to finish.

’It’s been sat in my folder for a long time and every now and then, I would do a bit on it, leave it, come back month on month.

’I think it is definitely one of my favourites, although I did eventually force myself to shade a bit in, just to get it finished.’

Other drawings are fun, yet finely detailed drawings inspired by albums and bands such as the Foo Fighters, Oceansize and Radiohead, which incorporate tiny and cryptic references to the track titles of the album each picture represents.

’Sometimes, particularly with the music-inspired pieces, I’ll draw a pencil sketch and I figure out how to fit in all the references I want to get in there, before building each picture up.

’But the weird ones, which aren’t particularly about anything I tend to just draw free until it starts to look like it may be a "thing",’ she said.

’I start it almost freestyle and see where it goes.

’There are a lot of fine details in these pictures, which is why I decided to hang little magnifying glasses around the room to help you really see the level of detail in the pictures.

’In the future I may actually start drawing my pictures using a magnifying glass. Normally I just draw using my eyesight, but I have to be so close to the paper.’

Suzy, who is also a gifted singer songwriter, created her exhibition after she was originally booked to sing at Mother T’s.

However, gallery owner Valerie Miller noticed her artwork and convinced her to hold a display instead.

Before this she had never given the idea of an exhibition a thought.

’Now I’ve done this one, I might look at doing a few more. I’ll definitely need a magnifying glass if I’m going to do that though.’

More details are available from the Mother T Facebook page.

by Mike Wade

Twitter:@iomnewspapers