Pencil Power

I want to post today about a few illustrators that really inspire me, who all work with pencil predominantly. I'm a huge fan of good ol' fashioned pencil drawing in illustration, and I'm constantly trying to improve my drawing because I think it's important in this crazy digital world to still have these skills.

I've just discovered an amazing illustrator through a recent post by the guys at It's Nice That, who only goes by the name Henri.






Pretty damn awesome. It's all about Playstation.

Next is my favourite, I think I came across her a while ago in Grafik magazine, her work has inspired me so much. Esra Roise:




This one I love; there's something so personal about it. Reminds me that I need to draw the contents of my handbag soon. Actually I might just draw my handbag, it's very pretty.
Tapes! I love tapes, drawing them is somehow really exciting. These are just beautifully drawn.

Some of these are drawn from photographs, snapshot-style, which was a source of inspiration for my Seven Sins project.

Next up is Denise Van Leeuwen (what a great name!) She works with text occasionally and her images have a super-surreal feeling to them; purposefully out of proportion and quite stunning:





The colours are great as well, love that blue hair!


Sophie Henson is also great, lots of hand drawn type (which of course everyone knows I love), she draws with pen rather than pencil but her work is equally tasty:



This is great, love this image so much.

Another 'contents of your handbag' type illustration. The blue tone of this makes it extra special, I guess it reminds me of biro doodling. And is that a cassette tape I spot? ;)


I hope people get as much inspiration/tickly sensations from these illustrators as I do. Their work blows me away. Also, do you know of any awesome pencil/pen illustrators out there that I don't? I'd love to feed my visual habit.


In other news, the kind people at Creative Wolverhampton have posted about my Seven deadly sins handmade book! Which was so exciting and unexpected ^.^ That's a really good blog actually, I've been following it recently, especially if you live/study in Wolves and the surrounding areas, with news, interesting bits, things like that. Check it owwwwwt.

I'll be posting again really soon, seems I have lots of things buzzing around in my head that I want to talk about. I had a job interview yesterday and I have an interview for an Illustrator placement tomorrow... that's very exciting.

Lastly, I saw Wolverine last night. Go see it. Effects are immense, Gambit is a legend (he's always been my favourite), and well... girls, it's Wolverine. Just go watch.