Charcoal in the Spotlight: Inside International Artist Magazine

International Artist Magazine, 8 page feature

It’s a rare moment for charcoal to take centre stage in International Artist Magazine, one of the world’s most respected fine-art publications, read by collectors, galleries, and professional artists across more than 50 countries. For decades, the magazine has showcased the masters of oil, acrylic, and watercolor. To see our charcoal work featured among them feels both humbling and affirming.

The feature explores our process as a father-and-daughter studio and how we bring wildlife to life using nothing more than two pencils, fine charcoal dust, and months of patient layering. It delves into the philosophy that underpins our art that illusion and emotion can exist without embellishment.

Charcoal has long been the foundation of art history. From Renaissance studies by Leonardo da Vinci to modern masters like Käthe Kollwitz, it has been used to explore humanity’s deepest emotions. Yet it is still often seen as a preparatory medium, the sketch before the painting. In our studio, charcoal is the destination.

Its rawness and immediacy allow emotion to sit close to the surface. Each line carries both precision and imperfection, a reminder of the artist’s hand and the subject’s fragility. Charcoal has a timeless quality that makes it a powerful choice for collectors: it connects past and present, tradition and innovation, realism and spirit.

The International Artist feature recognises that potential, that mastery and emotional depth can live within simplicity. It’s an acknowledgment not just of technique, but of restraint. In a world saturated with colour and noise, we aim to create silence, drawings that feel alive, yet calm; detailed, yet pure.

For us, this recognition is more than an achievement. It’s a signal that charcoal is being seen anew, not as a study of form, but as a medium for feeling.