‘Funeral.’
 
With just an ordinary ballpoint pen, the kind we’ve all used to scribble down classroom notes or phone numbers for possible Friday night dates, Toronto-based artist Rebecca Yanovskaya creates exquisite, magical worlds filled with mythical beings and characters out of creepy old folktales (Bluebeard) which she then blings up with a lot of 22 karat gold leaf.

Yanovskaya has been drawing with a ballpoint pen since middle school and she finds it easier to use when bringing her imagination to life on the page. She usually starts off by sketching out her picture with a Bic Crystal on Moleskine paper. Then she fills out the background before working her way forward to the heart of the action. This allows her time to get a feel for how much light and shade the finished image will contain.

What I love about pen is that I can always jump back and forth to any area of the piece that I want to work on and not worry about smudging or messing up dark/light layers.

As for influences, Yanovskaya takes her lead from painters like the Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha, the English Neo-Classicist John William Godward, and more obviously because of his use of gold leaf, her own personal favorite the Symbolist Gustav Klimt. She also pulls in ideas from her interest in horror, fantasy, and mythology—of which Yanokovskaya has said:

Mythology to me has always been about bigger than life struggles, and a world which is better than life, more idealized. The personalities are strong, exaggerated, passionate, heroic, beautiful. These are all qualities I want to capture through my art.

Once the picture is all drawn out, Yanovskaya adds the gold leaf to create the final image—which is exquisite and utterly enchanting.

Some of Yanovskaya’s artworks are available on a selection of clothing and she has also produced illustrations for the Netflix series Shadowhunters as well as a commerative coin design for the Canadian Mint. See more of Rebecca Yanovskaya’s work here.
 

‘Paso Doble.’
 

‘Bluebeard’s Bride—Chapter One.’
 
See more of Rebecca Yanovskaya’s amazing art, after the jump…
 

 
Not too surprisingly, Paris-based artist Helena Hauss’ choice of Bic pens to be her primary artistic implements does go back to her school days. “I first started drawing abundantly all through high school in my exercice [sic] books rather than writing down what the teacher was saying, and using bic pens was always a good way not to get caught when being watched from afar!”

But Bic pens, ballpoint pens, biros, whatever you want to call them, have another virtue that doesn’t have anything to do with avoiding the scrutiny of teachers: “I have always had a big attraction for the color blue, so much so that all my clothes and accessories were a shade of it, so when I drew I very much liked using blue ink, such as the one found in bic pens.” Hauss’ artworks are large and very detailed and most have to do with the wanton, irresponsible lives of teenagers and young adults—with an emphasis on trashy media, the libido, rock music, drug use, and other good stuff. Her skill with the Bic pen is such that if you didn’t already know what was used, you wouldn’t necessarily guess that it was even possible to make works this visually dazzling with them.
 

 

 

 
More dazzling Bic pen masterpieces after the jump…..
 

 
What you’re looking at is not a photograph, but a portrait done with ballpoint pens on paper by artist Samuel Silva. It took approximately 30 hours to finish and lost about 20% of quality during scanning.

Apparently Silva is being bombarded by hundreds of questions concerning this piece. There’s a nice FAQ section on the artist’s page that answers the most frequently asked questions.

Click here to see a larger image of “Redhead Girl.”

Via High Definite