A drawing artist with a perfect hand?

Some of the drawings looked so perfect and full of details that it made even me to question if these were pure drawings or drawings/photos with the touch of photo shop . Anyway, discussion went a long way so i decided to take a closer look at Linda’s work.

This light bulb looks so real! Can you believe that this was drawn by a human hand? How she manages to do this? Well, there might be an answer.

I started out drawing from life, then as the years passed my drawings became more detailed. Today most all of my work takes anywhere from 20-80 hours so I work primarily from reference photos. I’m self taught and strive for realism in each piece using only graphite pencils. Details are key to realism so patience is significant, working a small area to near finish before moving on is a personal technique of mine. Portraiture is one favorite due to the vast features also capturing a unique personality is always a rewarding challenge. Drawing inanimate objects has become another favorite, textures such as metal and glass are extremely interesting and fun to draw. I’ve been taking commissions since 1998 from people across the US and all over the world. My artwork has been used in advertisement, books, has been featured on many internet sites, Ovation TV, and in a local art gallery ~Linda.

Q: How do you get your drawings to look so realistic?

A: I draw not only what I see but what I know! For example, from years of doing portrait work I know the anatomy of a face, I also know to never skip over any individual details. Details such as that perfect balance of light and shadow to define the shape of ones face. Features like unique flickers of light in each eye, the curve of a cheek, nose, lips, and teeth. Fine details such as hair texture, (including eyelashes and eyebrows) and even pours in the skin. Often times when drawing extreme details I will not look at the whole and will turn the reference and drawing upside-down and work on a tiny section. This technique forces me to focus more intently on those details. It’s so relaxing and so natural for me to draw in such a blind state.

This beautiful bride is the last drawing I worked on (from 8-28-08 to 9-9-08) and it’s the first detailed bride commission I have ever done. I enjoyed drawing this one and spent many hours going over areas and adding fine details. I used a 3b mechanical pencil, B, and H pencils, plain tissue(TP), small and large blending stumps, kneaded eraser and an electric eraser. I truly hope to get many more bridal commissions over time. ~Linda

I have taken couple videos from her website showing how she draws. You can watch how she does that and listen her explaining the process of drawing a glass with a red vine.

Final result:

If you still cant believe that her drawings weren’t made by hand, you can find many more videos and tips about it on this page: tips and videos.

Finally, we have come to a question if this was art or just good drawing. Well, the answer isn’t simple.

As one of the readers sad, her ability to acquire the subtle shading of the subject and then transfer it to paper is incredible, but everyone will not agree on the question of her work being artistic. Noone can ever give a perfect explanation and definition of art. It comes more to subjective matters. We can only agree that artistic work has to be original in a way and not a mere copy of another creation. Even a simple detail can make things different. So we come to a conclusion that even a child can be considered an artist, but we can’t dismiss quality of work and idea that stands behind it as non impotrant. All these things have to be taken into consideration.

Painting of a reality can be more beautiful that reality itself. A hand can never draw all the details, as it would take almost infinite time to finish that, but being able to catch all the important ones and make the picture close enough to things in real world is something that takes a lot of skill and passion for the work. A little bit of love given to it can be a missing piece to make your creation more than just a copy of something else, and that could make your work original and special enough to be considered as an artwork.

Linda said to me: “What people don’t understand is this is my chosen style and I don’t plan to change it now or ever, I do not like to draw loose sketches, I love to draw someone or something that is as real as in real life, not just draw a copy of a photo.”