Artist Mark Powell uses a ballpoint pen to create finely detailed drawings on vintage newspapers, maps, book pages, and other paper scraps. Powell's

Illustration, Drawing, Fine Arts, Biro Pen, Ballpoint Pen

From his Brighton-based studio on the seafront, Mark Powell (previously) pieces together crinkled book pages and postcards laden with travel dispatches. The vintage collages serve as backdrops for the artist’s oversized portraits of older folks, whose pensive stares and deep wrinkles are rendered gently in ballpoint pen. Often magnified, the subjects complement the weathered, ephemeral surfaces that span multiple feet. “I’m currently working on a series of larger works because they have much…

We’ve featured artist Mark Powell previously back in 2012. Revisiting his website, we spotted many exciting new works, that we’d like to introduce to you...

Mark Powell draws birds, intimate portraits, and emotional scenes on tapestries of vintage postcards and other ephemera.

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Mark Powell, whose work we discovered over at Colossal, draws incredibly detailed, sumptuous portraits on the backs of vintage envelopes with nothing but a regular old Bic Biro pen. These portraits, often of the elderly subjects, are drawn on the…

"I find that the unconventional paper tells its own story with the signs of the passage of time upon it much like the faces I draw too. They both suggest a story that isn't told."

Bic biro drawing on a 1849 letter