Pastel, Charcoal, and Carbon Pencil Art by Ellen Cornett
What a Beautiful Bird am I, carbon pencil and coloured pencil
Ellen Cornett is an artist who works in pastel, charcoal, and carbon pencil. Based in Maryland, the artist’s current body of work is largely focused on personal interpretations of stories and fairytales.
The Elephant's Child, carbon pencil
I really enjoy the way that Ellen combines photo-realistic detail with compositions that lean into the absurd. In series like Just So Stories, the artist creates layered images with drawings of people, objects, and animals that intersect in a fashion reminiscent of collage. The images in this series each tell a story through a series of disjointed visual details, and the negative space between allows for variance in viewer interpretation.
While the majority of Ellen’s current drawing projects are in greyscale, the artist is equally adept at using colour, as seen in her pastel drawings. The works in this series have a more distinctly illustrative feeling to them, and the dense detail and backgrounds afforded by Ellen’s painterly use of the medium lend to an overall sense of intrigue.
