Featured Artist Paul Shafranski

Enjoy the masterful portfolio of featured artist Paul Shafranski, and see more of this talented artist’s work by visiting his website.

 

 

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and have always known I would be an artist. As early as the age of four, I would spend hours drawing on the back of out-of-print rolls of wallpaper my mother would buy for me. I grew up in Orlando, Florida, and after graduating from high school, continued my art education at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, FL. Since college, I have continued taking classes wherever I have lived.

 

 

To keep from being a starving artist, I went into the engineering field. Old school engineering, meaning drawings done manually. During this time, I developed a liking for pen and ink drawings. The feel for the crisp lines and crosshatching appealed to me.

 

 

I have been involved with many forms of the visual arts; printing, drawing, sculpture, carving, photography, ceramics, technical illustration, graphic design and cartooning. For the past 20+ years, I have preferred drawing with pen & ink, which is not a forgiving art form. All of my drawings are free hand and there is a great attention to detail in my artwork.

 

 

My artwork is generated because of the subject, light, tones, shadows and textures, using crosshatch, stippling and some pointillism. A strong emotional feeling is almost always involved with my work. I usually have five or six pieces going at once. I think that working on one drawing for two hours and a different drawing for three hours keeps me fresh and I don’t get bogged down.

 

 

At this time, I am working on anything from birds to barns. I love to draw in a way that makes the brain of the viewer work to put it all together. I enjoy using positive and negative spaces in my work, and I’m constantly looking for those spaces.

 

 

While living in the Northwest, I developed a very real appreciation for Native Americans. They are a regal and prideful people and I hope you will be able to recognize that as you browse through my Native American Gallery. As you will see, I have since branched out in many different directions because there are so many things that inspire me to put pen to paper.

 

 

As with every artist I have ever met, the most important thing to me is to be able to create art and be respected by the general public. Of course, we all hope to create that which others will enjoy and want to have in their own homes. My ultimate goal is to make a good living with my art.