
26-year-old Australian artist CJ Hendry has been creating these jaw-dropping hyper-realistic pen drawings for two years now.
Armed with only paper and pen, she creates magnificent, photorealistic black-and-white images in large format. Her subjects are generally high-end fashion objects, such as a Hermes scarf or a Louis Vuitton horse head, but they can also be other inanimate objects including sculls and guns. Check more works in her instagram.
“After having left school I enrolled in architecture and immersed myself in a world of lines, rendering, and architectural history,” Hendry said. “It was a completely captivating degree and I spent hour upon hour dissecting oversize black and white scale plans. All my assignments were hand drawn with a pen and ruler as I couldn’t figure out how to navigate CAD and Revit.”
Hendry decided to focus on drawing for one year. “I made a deal with myself,” she says. “If I didn’t sell anything in 365 days I would re-enroll in university and go back to what I was doing.
“Luckily, after a couple of months I got my first major sale and there was no way I would ever set foot in a university campus again.”
Her first sale was no small achievement. She sold a drawing of a pair of R.M. Williams boots to a Sydney art collector for $10,000. Her work was then spotted by The Cool Hunter, who organised Hendry’s first showing.
She sold all of her work via Instagram before the show even started.
Hendry now sells her large-scale pieces of luxury handbags and shoes for up to $50,000. Now Kanye has acquired one, the price seems sure to jump again. Here are some prime examples of her work.