Anonymous Artist Creates Pencil-Inspired Street Art

An anonymous artist near Stroud, UK is drawing attention to a nearby field by painting its stakes into giant pencils.  This “Banksy-like” street art won the favor of the stakes’ owner, farmer Nick Dart, who had to install the posts upside-down (or “pointside-up”) in order to fix them into concrete.  Some artist saw the pointed stakes and couldn’t help but envision the potential pencils within.

This got us thinking about how much pencil-inspired street art is out there.  We looked around Google and found that pencils are all over the world’s cityscapes.  These four pieces are humbling tributes to our favorite writing tool.

Latvia: Jonna Pohjalainen’s Giant Colored Pencil Sculptures

Finnish artist Jonna Pohjalainen transformed a field of Aspen trees into colored pencils, whittling down the tops and painting the points.  The piece is part of an outdoor exhibition at Latvia’s Open Air Art Museum.  By creating these gigantic colored pencils, Pohjalainen hopes to explore how her sculptures interact with the weather and the light over time.  Read more here.

Sao Paolo: Call Parade’s Pencil-Struck Phone Booth 

A Sao Paolo phone booth has been modified with a green hue and a golf pencil by Call Parade, an organization of street artists who have been painting and modifying Brazil’s phone booths since 2012 to add flare to the city.  The modification raises important questions:  Who threw the golf pencil?  Where can one buy a golf pencil that big?  We may never know, but we can marvel at the artist’s inventiveness – and that’s fine enough. 

Check out more of Call Parade’s modified phone booths.

Bristol: Filthy Luker’s Art Attacks

Bristol street artist Filthy Luker creates vividly humorous street installations with the objective of making people stop and laugh.  This “Made in Taiwan” pencil installation suggests outsourcing, critical thinking and showcases quite the giant pencil.  Whoever wrote the proverbial writing on the wall had to have first obtained a pencil to do so. 

Read more about Filthy Luker and explore other Art Attacks.

San Francisco: Mace, Ex-Vandals, Brush and Pencil

Graffiti artist Mace created this piece that adorns a gate on South Van Ness Street in San Fancisco. Though he used spraycans to make it, the piece is a stylized ode to classic tools of creation: the pencil, the paintbrush and the bottle.  

Check out more San Francisco street art.

Not every artist creates art as an homage to the pencil, but most have to use one.  Shop our drawing pencils and draft up your masterpiece.

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