Pencil Artist of the Week: Bill Boyer

This week’s featured pencil artist is Bill Boyer, a retired professional artist who worked in the video game industry for the last 17 years. Bill is a self-taught 3D digital artist, but has spent his days in retirement getting back to his traditional art roots.

Bill’s DeviantArt gallery (where he goes by the handle oldmanboyer), is filled with graphite portraits, doodles, and comics. Bill uses an assortment of pencils ranging from 4H to 4B on the graphite grading scale, along with a white charcoal pencil to highlight and shade his drawings. He also uses unbleached paper, giving his drawings a natural depth and grittiness that would not be possible with pure white paper.

Bill’s style is realistic, but his subjects never appear to be posed. His drawings have a very natural feel to them, as if the subject is unaware that their likeness is being captured. The results are drawings that feature emotion and movement that is not only believable, but almost tangible.

Drawings by Bill Boyer

If you want to see more of Bill’s drawings, you can check out his DeviantArt profile here. You can also check out his blog, where he shares his drawings, musings and past works.

What do you think Pencils Blog readers? Let us know in the comments section below!