welcome
Hi, I’m John. I'm based in Scotland and I create highly detailed, realistic pencil portraits.
The artwork on this site is entirely hand-drawn from start to finish. These aren't photographs.
Feel free to look around - you'll find examples of my work in the gallery sections.
If you're considering a piece for yourself, I’d love to hear from you.
My commissions are open and I ship worldwide.
Current lead time is approximately 3 months.
Studio - 08x11" / Signature - 16x12".
Drawn using your photos.
Tiny, postcard-sized drawings.
As rich in detail as my larger pieces.
Own a piece of artwork born from observation or occasional obsession.
When I was around 9 or 10, my Papa (Grandad) had these two little bits of card sitting in a drawer.
On each was a tiny fishing boat. Dark. Gloomy. Barely more than silhouettes. Some old guy from the
pub had drawn them years before and for whatever reason, he kept them.
I couldn’t stop staring at them. I used to try and copy them, over and over. There was just something about the
mood they gave off. The feeling that there was a whole story buried in just a few rough marks.
As happens with life, that obsession drifted off as other things took its place. But I never forgot those boats, and
somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I’d come back to them one day.
Salt & Silence is based on photography by Adi Emal and measures 16x12".
I pushed the sky around a little to give the upper right more movement and weight, but kept the wreck itself
true to the original capture. Drawing this reminded me why I became obsessed with these things in the first place.
The result of some thought experiments.
After years of drawing other people's pets, I finally got around to drawing my own wee girl - meet Bella.