Julia Koceva

My name is Julia, and I’m an artist based in Sweden. I’ve been drawing with a technique called stippling for about 4 years. 

Stippling is a technique which creates the illusion of patterns and/or levels by placing various amounts of dots to your surface.

 

I mainly draw the human figure and hands as a primary subject. The human body serves as a surface for me to explore and dally with different lights and shadows that appear on each body.

 

To create my pieces I use Rotring Rapidograph 0.1 mm on Arches 640 gsm Rough Paper Nature White. Rotring Rapidograph is what’s known as a reservoir pen, where the ink comes in exchangeable cartridges. I use the 0.1 mm nib to achieve the highest level of realism to my work. 

 

I’ve chosen stippling as my method of work because I find it a tickling concept to draw, for example, a simple circle, which is easily accomplished with a single movement of a pen, drawing it by placing numerous dots instead. This creates the appearance of a circle, but is in fact singular dots in a pattern. This reminds me of “The Treachery of Images” by Rene Magritte (”Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. )

Stippling allows the viewer to “fill in the gaps” of the circle to create the illusion. Stippling is also exciting to view, both up close and far away.