Melissa Cooke specializes in graphite on paper and through her drawing she investigates the relationship between photography, performance and drawing in portraiture. Her process includes dusting thin layers of graphite onto paper with a dry brush and then augmenting the smooth surfaces by erasing in details and textures.  

Nick Simon's graphite illustrations involve geometric patterns and studies of owls, elements in the animal kingdom and the occasional skull. Rendered with such delicate intricacy, it's surprising that this is all of the information I could gather from the vastness of the Internet about Nick Simon and his work, though his originals are still available in his online store. Zing!

June Eng is  a New York based visual artist and a self-proclaimed 'drawer and painter of beautiful things and beautiful people.' Her intricate graphite renderings are created with a gorgeous attention to detail, often collaging her portraits and subject matter with macabre imagery, flora, fauna and the occasional chihuahua.

Living and working in Brooklyn, NY - Brian Scott Campell's drawings depict a disorienting combination of both interior and exterior space. In an exploration of both individual memory and collective history, personal symbols are merged with an expansive stream of familiar forms.

  'Orka Collective is a project of two people, Abo and Ooli, who have the same way of thinking. We get our inspiration from nature, magic, animals, people and from everything that happens around us. We specialize in graphic and web design, illustration and branding.'

Michelle Furlong's artworks revolve around the human form, using the mediums of drawing, painting, and sculpture to investigate the limits space in and around the body. Furlong's drawings wrap and fragment arms, heads, feet, shoulders, and everything else in contorted and high-tension positions that flatten some limbs while others emerge fully rendered in graphite.

David Cristobal is a young artist born and raised in Spain who has spent the past two years living in Italy. He graduated from the School of Art in Madrid, and he continues his artistic journey in the city of Milan, where he has gained an intensely personal style. His most recent exhibition of graphite illustrations was a series of images influenced by the sounds, words and music of contemporary artists who, somehow, were an integral part of his life.

On our Monday morning cruise around, we got sucked into the oil painting world of Venice, California based Becca Mann. A mixture of Southern California, a bit of early California and Southwestern style shows up in her paintings, and a few nice ocean/surf scenes in her graphite works are all very well executed. A good start to the week.

Impressive and detailed pencil drawings by the New York (Brooklyn) based artist and designer Frank Magnotta. “I’m not really daunted by blank paper. I do a lot of prep work before I start so I usually have a good idea of which direction I want to go in. Maybe it is my mathematical or sculptural background, but I really think concretely about what I’m going to do before beginning...'  

Witchcraft, religion, the holy cow of humanist art, and renderings of mythological narrative are deeply rooted within Eric Beltz’s series “Trance Farm”. The title is borrowed from a forced pun found in an article about urban farming in a contemporary spiritualist magazine as Beltz both laughs with and laughs at American society.