Pencil Artist of the Week: Augusto Abarca

This week’s featured pencil artist is Augusto Abarca, a graphic designer living and working in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Augusto’s DeviantArt gallery is filled with drawings that range from character designs and fan art, to caricature and concept art. While I love his takes on characters from mythology and pop-culture (I’m looking at you Zeus and Hulk), it was his collection celebrity caricatures that initially caught my eye.

Augusto’s gallery contains caricatures of everyone from Channing Tatum and Nicole Kidman, to Jared Leto and Paul McCartney. Each caricature is drawn in Augusto’s distinct style, a style that may be best described as that of a caricature artist in a Henry Selick movie. Augusto uses hard lines and sharp angles to draw his subjects, giving his drawings a chiseled, almost sculpted look. Like the stop-motion figures in Selick’s films, Augusto’s subjects appear to be carved and molded directly onto the page.

Augusto uses a combination of mechanical and woodcased pencils to create his drawings. He uses mechanical pencils to lay down his basic lines and shapes, followed by the side of a woodcased pencil to soften the edges and shade his drawings. Finally, he uses charcoal pencils to achieve true blacks and finish each piece. The firmest pencil Augusto uses is a 1H, relying instead on softer pencils to sketch his drawings.

Drawings by Pencil Artist Augusto Abarca

If you would like to see more of Augusto’s work, you can check out his DeviantArt profile here. You can also like Augusto on Facebook for daily updates about his creative process.

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