Loving Portraiture by Graham Hall
Johanna Heldebro, acrylic on wood panel
Montreal artist Graham Hall is an accomplished painter and illustrator, jumping between styles and subjects with apparent ease. Graham’s style ranges from cartoonish, quickly done line art in his drawings, to very smooth realistic portraits and clean, geometric lines.
Morpeheon, acrylic on wood panel
All of Graham’s work is wonderfully expressive, and it’s nice that it doesn’t lose anything when it becomes more polished. In Graham’s gallery of experimental works on his website portfolio, he showcases some portraits that he’s done based on high school yearbook photos. I love these drawings because they’re so loose and yet they manage to fully capture the essence of each individual – perhaps better even than the original yearbook photos did!
Depanneur (Marche Bernard), pen and ink on duralar
I really appreciate Graham’s loving portraiture. Each work is titled with the full name of the subject, and the subjects appear on backgrounds that I can assume are things important to each individual. Most of his subjects are pictured smiling as well, which is lovely.
