Pencil Artist of the Week: Corrina Thurston

This week’s featured artist is Corrina Thurston, a pencil artist from the United States who creates drawings using color, graphite and charcoal pencils. Corrina turned to drawing as a constructive outlet after she began suffering from the symptoms of Chronic Epstein-Barr virus in 2010. Since then, she has developed into a pencil artist with a knack for portraiture and realism.

The subjects of Corrina’s drawings are often animals, though she does dabble in human portraits as well. Her favorite medium is color pencils, and she admits she was “shocked at the amount of depth, detail, and richness of color that can be achieved with colored pencil.”

“I’m an artist who specializes in pencil drawings of both wildlife and domestic animals. For my colored pencil drawings I use Prismacolor Premier pencils in layers upon layers to create the rich, vibrant color. I start with lighter layers and work toward the darker layers on top. For some of the smaller, finer details I use an x-acto knife to etch away the top layers of colored pencil, such as for fur/feathers and crisp edges.

For my graphite drawings I use Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils, 2H-4B. Again, I layer from the lighter greys to the darker ones, one pencil stroke at a time.”

Corrina’s drawings are vibrant and saturated with color. She uses background and accent colors to convey mood, allowing each drawing to tell a story, even if not explicitly.

Drawings by Pencil Artist Corrina Thurston

If you’d like to see more of Corrina’s work, you can check out her website here. You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook for more frequent updates.

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 or tag us on Instagram or Twitter @pencilscom.