Pencil Artist of the Week: Paul Murray

This week’s featured artist is Paul Murray, a pencil artist and photographer born and raised in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. While studying to become an architectural drafter, Paul decided to pursue his interest in animals and begin his career as a semi-professional wildlife photographer. Most of his drawings are based off of his own nature photography and, as such, have a look to them that is uniquely “Paul,” filtered first through the lens of his camera and then through his lens as a visual artist.

Paul was kind enough to give us some insight into his creative process:

“I’ll take a photo, have the laptop next to my drawing desk, zoom in and literally go inch by inch as I draw. The most challenging part is the finding the right poses, and trying to convey the characteristic of the animal and its expression…”

He also provided us with a look at his work space and the tools he uses to create his drawings:

“My drawing desk, as you could understand is mostly organized chaos, as it should be. I use Staedtler pencils, 2B up to 6B. I do sometimes cheat and use a 0.5mm clutch pencil for some of the finer lines. All of my drawing is done freehand (no rulers), and I find having a surface big enough for the paper/board I’m using helps. I have a combination of 3 different hardness erasers, which I wash clean with soap after each use, (the softer rubber I cut in thin strips for the thinner hairs and whiskers).”

In addition to animal drawings, Paul also creates drawings of old style architecture. Knowing that these drawings are created without the aid of rulers and compasses is particularly impressive.

Finally, Paul offered some tips for any aspiring artists out there:

“Tip for some of the finer shading: when you sharpen your pencils, which should be often, sharpen them into a shallow container, like an old paint tube box. When you need a bit of ‘uniform shading’, take your finger or a small hard-ish brush, roll it around the pencil ‘ash’ at the bottom and try your different shading darknesses. This works great as well for background shading too.”

If you want to see more of Paul’s work, you can check out his website here. You can also like Paul on Facebook and view his Fine Art America and Pixoto profiles here.

What do you think Pencils Blog readers? Do you know someone who should be featured as our Pencil Artist of the Week? Let us know in the comments!