This artist does the most detailed pen drawings you've ever seen

So detailed.
By Laura Byager  on 
This artist does the most detailed pen drawings you've ever seen
Credit: Olivia kemp studio

The amount of detail in artist Olivia Kemp's massive landscape drawings is breathtaking.

Especially when you consider the fact that she works predominantly in pen.

But for Kemp, who draws her work directly onto the paper, it's not even about the details.

"None of the work sets out to be intensely detailed as that’s not the purpose of them," she told Mashable. "It just becomes an absorbing part of the process."

Doing these intricate drawings doesn't put a strain on Kemp's patience, either.

"Because it’s indelible and I can’t rework anything, it’s actually a very immediate process, and I don’t find I have to stretch my patience to work in this way," she explained.

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These large scale drawings depict what Kemp calls "imagined worlds" inspired by travel, photos and memories. Despite of the complexity of the work, though, Kemp doesn't sketch out her ideas first.

"Occasionally I will map out the start of something I might be adding to the drawing," said Kemp, who holds an MA in Drawing from Wimbledon College of Arts.

Kemp has been getting a lot of attention for her artwork on social media, but she is trying hard not to let it influence her drawing.

"As an artist, I’ve found it a really useful tool, but it’s certainly a double-edged sword," she said. "There have been times when I’m drawing something because it interests me, and I’ve lost hundreds of followers almost overnight, because I’m not drawing what they expect of me.

"I think you have to ignore that side of social media."

Despite that, Kemp's work gets likes and retweets in the thousands when she shares photos of it on her Twitter.

And looking at her drawings, it's not hard to see why.


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