Kelly Smith — Pencil Fashion & Beauty Illustrator, Australia

What clients love about Australian fashion illustrator Kelly Smith is the tiny touch of magic she gives to each of her finely detailed pencil illustrations. Perfectly proportioned forms, delicate shading and enticing texturing draw the eye to the focal point of the image, which is further highlighted by her deft use of negative space and exacting dashes of colour.

Kelly is in her element when creating fashion and beauty imagery, exploring floral patterns, fabric textures, hair, skin tones, facial features and colour palettes to give her images a poetic balance between realism and fantasy. Her work has appeared in magazines and online, on products, promos and rendered large at events around the world. She has a BA in Fine Art from the Tasmanian School of Art.

Approach

Kelly’s approach is mainly traditional, with 90 per cent of the work completed using a graphite pencil. She then scans the drawing in, adding colour and tweaking the image using Photoshop.

Key Software

Photoshop

Style

Her intricately detailed pencil illustrations are soft and feminine in tone and content, with subtle areas of colour to catch the eye. As Kelly’s style has developed she’s introduced more colour to her work, sometimes bringing it to the fore to enhance contrast and impact.