Pencil Artist of the Week: Ian Hedley

This week’s featured pencil artist is Ian Hedley, a pencil artist from the UK who also runs the blog Pens! Paper! Pencils!. When he isn’t blogging, he’s creating contemplative drawings that “draw you in and give you space to think.”

Ian struggles with the all-to-common challenge of finding time to draw while working a demanding, full-time job. He manages to overcome this struggle, however, by finding time to draw every morning before he goes to work.

“By day I’m Head Teacher of a small school that works with young people who aren’t able to manage in mainstream education. It’s a busy but rewarding job. I get up early and draw in the mornings before I go to work. If I don’t draw in a day I get a little twitchy. I used to draw a lot with at school but stopped when I started teaching. After a break of more than twenty years I started up again last year and now there’s no stopping me!”

Ian was kind enough to give us some insight into his creative process (and why he uses wood-cased pencils rather than mechanical pencils):

“I tend to start with an outline using a 6H pencil and then I build up a section at a time, using 4H, HB, 2B, 4B and 6B. Tombow pencils are smooth and give me a lot of control but more than anything they smell wonderful. The smell of wooden pencils and the ritual of sharpening are what keeps me using them rather than mechanical pencils.”

All three of the drawings Ian shared with us were drawn using Tombow Mono 100 drawing pencils.