Introducing Karen from Karen Buchan Pencil Artist. Where every item is handmade!! From her home in Melbourne, Victoria, Karen hand makes all of her amazing creations.
Find out why Karen started creating and why she is so passionate about the value of handmade.
Tell us about your creations and your handmade process.
All my images are hand drawn using photos as my reference - animals just don't sit still for long enough! I copy my chosen image using the grid method, and then transfer it to my paper of choice which is usually smooth hot pressed watercolour paper. Then the fun part begins - adding colour!
If I'm drawing an animal I always start with the eyes as these give life to the drawing straight away. Colour pencil is a very slow medium as it requires a lot of light layers and colour blending to achieve good depth of colour. It takes a lot of patience, and every drawing goes through "the ugly stage" before the layers are complete.
An A4 size drawing can take 10-15 hours to complete, A3 can be up to 30 hours or more. I have my original pieces professionally scanned, and then prints, cards and other items produced from those scans. I try to source everything as locally as possible to minimise my environmental footprint - all my scanning and printing is done here in Melbourne, and my cards are printed on 100% recycled cardstock.
Tell us a bit about your journey to becoming a handmade artist.
Coming from an artistic family, over the years I've dabbled in painting, craft, photography, sewing, the list goes on. Drawing has always been my favourite - a few years ago I drew a portrait of our dogs (looking back at it now, it makes me cringe - it's terrible!) then did a few pet portraits for friends and family and things just grew from there.
After doing pet portraits for five years, I wanted to expand a bit (and let's face it, I was ready to use some different colours other than fur colours!) so I started drawing native animals and flowers and producing prints and cards, and joined Madeit at the end of 2023. In June this year I left my job of 13 years as a teacher's aide to focus full time on my art, and I'm loving it!
What is your inspiration or where do you find inspiration?
Animals and nature are my inspiration. I've always loved animals and had pets all my life (we have two dogs and six chickens).
I'm the person at parties that will end up sitting in the corner playing with the dog.
We live in a very leafy part of outer Melbourne, and I love the native wildlife that visits us - we have possums, numerous bird species, frogs, butterflies and lizards in our native garden. My camera is full of reference photos, and I have a list a mile long of "things I want to draw" and it just comes down to finding the right photo to work from.
Where did you learn your craft?
My Dad was an amazing artist, and he helped me a lot with my drawing skills as I was growing up. I attended a couple of drawing workshops after finishing high school (that was quite a while ago haha!) and I enjoy following other artists online and picking up tips and ideas here and there, but other than that I'm self-taught.
Why is handmade artistry so important to you?
I love the skill involved in producing a handmade piece of art as opposed to buying something mass-produced. When you purchase a handmade item, you're not just buying that item, you're buying into years of skill learned through practice, experimentation, failure, frustration and triumph.
