Angela French

So like I said, I am going to look at quite a few artists who like to work in graphite or colored pencil. This next artist is Angela French. She also does a lot of animal drawings. 

Young Blue

Dove

Her style involves a LOT of dark in her drawings. There tends to be a very high contrast between the background (often black) and the subject matter (usually lighter grays and white). This style gives her drawings an interesting feel. A lot of them feel like they are taking place at night. The style also makes the subject matter seem pretty isolated, and the viewer often cannot tell what the context is that the animal is in.

Ghost

Mandarin

Many of her drawings express a sense of action (or soon-to-be action, such as in "Thief").  The owl and the dove are in mid-flight, the duck is swimming around, and the mongoose is about to leap into the nest to steal an egg or two. In "Young Blue," the cat seems rather still, not like she is going to move in an instant, and the contrast of the lights and darks in the drawing are not as extreme as they are in the others. I do not know why this difference in style occurred. Maybe the high contrast of the other drawings adds to the feelings of suspense and action, while the lesser contrast in "Young Blue" adds to the calmer mood of the sitting cat. Either way, French has a captivating style in telling stories of the animals she depicts in her drawings.

Thief

-Maria

http://www.angelafrenchart.com/index.php