Turning the media’s most disturbing images into art

Haunting hyperrealism — From pornography to tragedies – in his new book, British artist Craig Boagey turns confrontational photography into intricate pencil drawings.

There’s something deeply sinister about Craig Boagey’s drawings. The British artist, who specialises in hyperrealistic, pencil-drawn art, aims to recreate the most confrontational images he comes across in everyday media. This includes – amongst other things – blurred pornography, school shootings, and war-torn cityscapes.

Central Saint Martins graduate Boagey switches between red pencil (for images of a more sexual nature) and blue (for those that are more tragic and violent). Each drawing takes between three days to three weeks to complete. “The blue ones are always more difficult because the subject matter is a lot more significant,” he tells Huck. “I like to juxtapose things, so when you have these very delicate and difficult subjects the blue sort of makes them calming in a way – it takes away the intensity.”

These haunting images have now been pulled together for Recital – a new book published by independent, Dalston-based publisher Ditto.

“I’m not necessarily interested in current affairs, I don’t want to make drawings relating to today directly because it would kind of feel like protest art, and I don’t want that,” the artist explains. “The scenes I like to choose are moments in time which are just fascinating, and a lot of the time these incidents create a trend of other similar incidents. In that way, they become relevant to today without necessarily being stories of the moment.”

“I don’t want to shock directly that would be too forced. I want it to be subtle, that works best for me,” he adds. “There are exceptions but, in general, that’s my approach.”