These five incredible pencil artists are impossible to ignore
Pencil drawing has a way of slowing everything down. It asks for time, focus, and a willingness to stay with a subject long enough to understand it. This feature brings together five contemporary pencil artists whose work proves just how much range and depth the medium can hold. Working across graphite and coloured pencil, portraiture and figurative study, animals and inner states, these artists show that pencil is not a stepping stone to something else, but a complete language in itself.
What links these five is not a shared style, but a shared approach. Each of them works with patience and control, paying close attention to tone, structure, texture, and the quiet details that give a drawing weight. Some strip images back to their essentials, letting space and restraint do the work. Others build slowly, layer by layer, allowing form and surface to emerge over time. Their drawings reward close looking rather than quick consumption, and they carry a sense of discipline shaped by years of study, practice, and careful decision making.
The work featured here moves between human faces, full figures, and animals, often focusing on moments that feel unguarded and unforced. These artists are interested in how a body rests, how a gaze holds, how an animal occupies space, and how much can be communicated without excess. Several of them also teach, sharing process and experience with a broader community, while continuing to develop demanding studio practices. Together, they present a clear picture of what contemporary pencil work can be when it is treated with seriousness, curiosity, and long-term commitment.
Kei Meguro@keimeguro
Kei Meguro is a pencil artist whose work stays with you long after you’ve seen it. Based between Tokyo and Brooklyn, she creates portraits that feel calm, detailed, and quietly expressive. Most of her drawings are made with pencil and graphite, with small touches of color where she wants your eye to rest. Her training in graphic design at the School of Visual Arts shaped her steady approach to form and composition, and you can see that clarity in every piece she makes.
What makes Kei stand out is the way she handles detail. She pays close attention to texture, tone, and subtle shifts in expression, building her drawings layer by layer until they feel almost real. She often draws inspiration from the inner world, identity, and the small moments in daily life that hold more meaning than we usually notice.
Her work has reached people far beyond her studio. She has collaborated with global brands and shared her process on stages like Adobe MAX and Apple workshops, all while continuing to build a strong body of personal work, limited editions, and commission pieces.
Kei’s drawings offer a steady reminder of how much can be said with something as simple as pencil and paper. Her Instagram, @keimeguro, is filled with glimpses of her quiet, detailed process, and her website continues to show just how thoughtful and consistent her practice is. In a feature on pencil artists, Kei Meguro earns her place with ease, showing how far patience, skill, and careful observation can take a single medium.
Bonny Snowdon@bonnysnowdonacademy
Bonny’s path into coloured pencil work did not follow a straight line. At seventeen, she was told she wasn’t good enough to pursue art, and she believed it. She set aside the dream she had carried through her teenage years and went into other work, spending decades in the corporate world. Everything shifted when, many years later, someone handed her a simple gift: a set of coloured pencils and a colouring book. What began as a quiet moment of curiosity turned into something much bigger. Drawing came back into her life, and with it came a sense of ease and confidence she hadn’t felt since childhood.
Within a year of rediscovering drawing, she made the decision to leave her corporate role and become a full-time artist. It was a leap that changed her life completely. Today she is not only creating pencil work but also teaching thousands of people around the world. For her, drawing is more than making an image. It is a way of slowing down, rebuilding trust in yourself and finding a steadier place to stand. She teaches with the belief that drawing can help anyone find courage they didn’t realise they had.
Her story resonates with many because it begins from a familiar place. She knows what it feels like to doubt yourself, to feel small, to believe you have missed your chance. That is why she teaches with so much warmth. She understands what happens when someone picks up a pencil again after thinking they never could. Her students often talk about how her encouragement helped them through moments far beyond the page.
Away from her teaching, Bonny lives with four dogs, a cat and a lively sense of humour that shows up in her conversations and videos. She still draws every day because it steadies her and gives her a sense of calm. Her grounded, open manner has built a large community around her, not because she sets out to impress anyone, but because she shares her challenges honestly.
In a feature of five pencil artists, Bonny brings something rare. Her drawings matter, but so does the story behind them. She shows how a pencil can change the course of a life, and she uses her platform to help others discover what might change for them too.
Ileana Hunter@ileanahunterart
Ileana Hunter grew up in Bucharest as a quiet child who spent much of her time surrounded by books and sketching faces on whatever paper she could find. Drawing was a steady part of her early years, until adult life and expectations pulled her in another direction. She studied hard, pursued psychology and tried to build a path that sounded sensible. Yet during her Master’s, the pencils found their way back to her and something familiar returned with them. That moment changed the course of her life.
After moving to the United Kingdom in 2008, Ileana continued drawing and slowly let go of everything in her portraits that felt unnecessary. What remained was the style she is now known for. Her work sits between quiet simplicity and sharply focused detail, creating a kind of tension that feels true to the way she sees the world. She often talks about her interest in contrast, in the push and pull between what is shown and what is left out. This approach became the foundation of what she calls minimal realism.
Her portraits have travelled far beyond her studio. They have appeared on book covers, in editorial work and in private collections. She has drawn for clients across many countries, including those in the public eye. Despite this reach, her process remains calm and considered. She gives careful attention to light, space and the small qualities in a face that make a drawing feel grounded.
Her series called Fragments sits close to her heart. Through cropped faces, quiet expressions and thoughtful use of empty space, she explores ideas around identity, mental health and the parts of ourselves that we sometimes try to hide. These drawings invite the viewer to look closely, but they also allow room for interpretation.
In a feature highlighting five pencil artists, Ileana’s work stands out for its clarity and restraint. She shows how much can be said with a limited set of tools and a willingness to trust stillness. Her journey from a hesitant student to a widely followed portraitist adds a quiet sense of courage to her work, making her presence in this group both fitting and compelling.
Clio Newton @clionewton
Clio Newton belongs to a generation of figurative artists who take drawing seriously as both a discipline and a language. Born in 1989 and now based in Zürich, her path runs through rigorous training at The Cooper Union, the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. That foundation shows in her pencil work, where anatomy, light, and surface are handled with patience rather than spectacle. Her drawings often linger on the human figure in moments that feel unguarded, sometimes awkward, sometimes tender, and never staged for comfort.
Newton’s relationship with pencil is physical and deliberate. Skin, fabric, and space are built slowly through layers of tone, allowing the viewer to sense time passing within the image. There is an attentiveness to bodies as they exist rather than as symbols, which gives her work a quiet tension. Recognition has followed without altering that focus. She is a three time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant, has held a residency through AKKU in Zürich, and has been selected by Artagon in Paris. Her work is now held by institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Flint Institute of Art, and the 21C Museum Foundation.
Whether exhibited in New York, Zürich, or Paris, Newton’s drawings resist spectacle and ask for closeness instead. In an era where speed often dominates, her pencil work insists on looking slowly and honestly at the figure, making her a compelling presence among today’s leading pencil artists.
Bethany Vere@bethanyvere_art
Bethany Vere’s drawings stop people mid-scroll because they feel quietly alive. Working almost exclusively with coloured pencils, she builds her images slowly and patiently, layering detail until the subject seems to breathe on the page. Horses appear alert and thoughtful, dogs feel familiar and trusting, and wildlife carries a calm presence that comes from careful observation rather than spectacle.
Based in Hampshire, Bethany did not follow a straight path into art. After stepping away from a marketing degree that no longer felt right, she committed fully to drawing, starting with small commissions for friends and family. What began as a leap of faith grew into a full-time career built on discipline, curiosity, and an honest love of the medium. Coloured pencil, often underestimated, became her chosen tool because it allows her to work with precision and control, taking the time each subject deserves.
Animals sit at the centre of her practice, especially horses. Years of studying anatomy, texture, and subtle shifts in expression show through in her work. There is no rush in her drawings. Every strand of hair and shift of light is considered, giving the viewer a sense that the animal has been truly seen rather than simply copied from a photograph.
Alongside her studio practice, Bethany is also a dedicated teacher. Through online courses, tutorials, and her Patreon community, she shares not just techniques but the realities of working with coloured pencils day after day. She speaks openly about process, mistakes, and progress, which has made her a trusted guide for artists at the beginning of their journey as well as those refining their skills.
Bethany Vere’s work stands out because it feels grounded and sincere. There is confidence in her craftsmanship and generosity in how she shares what she has learned. In a feature celebrating five brilliant pencil artists, her place is well earned not through spectacle, but through steady commitment, careful looking, and respect for both subject and medium.
Taken together, these five artists show how wide and grounded pencil work can be today. Their drawings come from different places, shaped by different lives and paths, yet they share a respect for time, attention, and careful looking. None of them rush the process or rely on effect. Instead, they return to the page again and again, building images slowly and with intent, trusting pencil to carry what they want to say.
What makes this group compelling is not just the finished drawings, but the way each artist stays committed to the medium through years of practice, doubt, learning, and change. Some found their way back to drawing after stepping away, others followed a long academic route, and some built their careers one quiet commission at a time. Pencil became the constant thread, steady enough to grow with them and flexible enough to support very different ways of seeing.
This feature is not about ranking or comparison. It is about paying attention to artists who choose focus over speed and care over noise. Their work asks viewers to slow down, look closer, and spend time with what is in front of them. In doing so, these five pencil artists remind us that lasting work is often built patiently, one line at a time, with nothing more than paper, pencil, and a clear sense of purpose.
