Abby Diamond

Sometimes when year 11 do research themselves, they find some amazing artists that I've never heard of before. One of our students emailed an artist research on Abby Diamond to be printed and I just had to research her myself.

A young Artist based in Pittsburgh, USA, freshly graduated in 2012 with BFA in Studio Art. Her favourite mediums include ink, watercolour, and paint, mediums I myself like to work with. Her drawings are very fluid and almost sketch like, built in layers giving the images depth and substance. Life-like animals jump out of the pages as if they could move and become a part of the world, all brightly coloured and fantastic likeness.

As a ‘freelance illustrator and scribbler of things’ creating beautiful imagery as well as monsters and mini beasts from the deep, she priduces art full-time, including tattoo designs, album artwork and card games, hoping to become a children’s book illustrator in the future.

So young yet so many places to go, and far she will go, Abby is inspired by museum visits, particularly science and art, as well as ‘observing oddities of animals and people’. Myths and Legends, Folktales and story-telling play a huge part in her works as well as writings by Neil Gaiman and Charles Warnke, and not forgetting illustrators such as Caitlin Hackett, Dave McKean and Shaun Tan.

Recently I've become very fond of dragonflies and been looking at creating my own artwork using them as the main focus. As watercolours are my favoured medium to work with as well as inks and pen work, it is no wonder that I immediately had to look up Abby's amazing work and see for myself what drew one of our students to her and I hope to take inspiration myself in creating artwork as good as these.

Please look at more of Abby's work shown on her tumblr account Roughly Drawn Things, she also sells her work as originals or prints in her Etsy store, Abby Diamond Draws.