Pencil Artist of the Week: Federico Uribe

If there is one word that can sum up the work of this week’s featured pencil artist, it’s “unreal.” Federico Uribe is an artist who lives and works in Miami, Florida, creating pencil sculpture and pencil “paintings” that are beyond classifications.

Federico was born in Bogota, Colombia and studied art at the University of Los Andes in Bogota. Upon graduating, he worked and studied in New York, Cuba, Mexico, Russia and England before settling in Miami to create his incredibly unique pencil creations.

Federico’s pencil paintings are composed entirely of sharpened, unsharpened, whole and broken pencils. Rather than use paints and brushes, Federico “paints” using the lacquer colors on the outside of shafts of pencils as his pigments. The result is a gallery of images that use the shapes and colors of various types of pencils for color, depth and texture.

His pencil sculptures are equally as impressive. In these creations, he uses pencils to create hair, eyes, teeth and anything else you can imagine just as a traditional sculptor would use clay, wood or stone.