Portland, Oregon-based Rachel Hanke is a structural engineer by day and an illustrator/concept artist by night who creates beautifully realistic portrait art. “I grew up drawing anything and everything (a lot of Sailor Moon fanart over the years) and it’s been very exciting to start turning that into something more as I’ve started to take on projects,” Hanke told TUBE. She prefers character-centric portraits, from fanart to fantasy themed work to basing an image off of a song. She plans to work on incorporating more narrative and storytelling into her work and would love to illustrate book covers some day.
Hanke describes her process as “‘just keep trying until something works.’ I generally start with a sketch and then work in greyscale for a good chunk of it, because it’s easier to just focus on getting the values to read properly without having to worry about color. And then after I’ve got something I’m mostly happy with in greyscale, I’ll start adding color and details until I’m happy with it (or tired of looking at it).” You can find Rachel Hanke and her work on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Words: Katta Hules. Images courtesy of the artist.