PENCIL POWER
YOU South Africa|26 May 2022
Self-taught artist Emma's hyper-real portraits of animals and people have turned her into a viral sensation
ROBYN LUCAS
PENCIL POWER

IT ALL started when she was a little girl and became intrigued with orcas after watching the hit 1993 movie Free Willy.

Emma Towers-Evans picked up her pencil and sketched picture after picture of killer whales, perfecting her strokes and style each time until she'd produced a mini-masterpiece in lead and she hasn't looked back since.

Emma TowersEvans creates photo-like pencil portraits. She started drawing at a young age

The 29-year-old from the West Midlands in England now makes a lucrative living sketching portraits of people and animals.

Each drawing takes her up to 100 hours to compete because they're incredibly detailed and involve more than 500 000 individual strokes.

"My style is hyper-realistic - I try to create something that looks as real as possible, Emma says.

"I like to draw things from the natural world, like people and animals. It's really exciting to see something come alive on the paper."

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