It’s been a bit over a year since we last checked in with New York based illustrator Sam Wolfe Connelly, and his work has only gotten better since then. I really like the sepia tone he’s been using in many of his pieces lately, it gives off a really great old, haunted house vibe. I think that middle piece with the bones oozing out of the hand like toothpaste has to be my favorite though. Such an odd but perfectly executed piece.

I was also browsing around Sam’s Tumblr and I came across this piece of advice which I thought could be helpful for illustrators out there.

I feel like I am Forcing graphite to be something that it isn’t with my mark making, how do you make such beautiful smooth textures while keeping detail to create images that have such a mysterious quality?

I tend not to use graphite as it might traditionally be used, since most the values in my drawings are erased away rather than shaded in. Using a kneaded eraser on a graphite-heavy surface softens the edges and gradations, opposed to harsher lines when you’re putting pencil straight onto an image. I tend to find myself doing a lot of glazing when it comes to adding shadows, and using tissues a lot of the time, so I get a steady value across large areas. I really hate taking a thin pencil to stark, white paper, because it never seems to turn out as soft as what I can create with an eraser. The best advice I can give is map out all the large shapes with your erasing and then slowly work your way into the smaller details with the pencil.