Artist transforms photos

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

Cindy Eisbrenner’s art is a bit of a family project. Her husband Martin is a photographer, and she will often take his photos and transform them into sketches, mainly using graphite and charcoal as her medium.
“Most of my stuff is black and white, because I like black and white photos and just the depth that you can get with charcoal,” said Eisbrenner.
“There’s a lot of nature, a lot of rodeo and there’s karate because my girls and I, and my son, we do karate so that kind of works its way in.”
Family comes first to Eisbrenner, so for a long time her art was more for fun, and usually consisted of her doodling. In 2007 she took art classes with her daughters and realized how much she really likes to draw. Her art has developed from there.
“I think it was about two years ago, I wanted to draw more but I needed something to make me draw more so that I can develop skills. So I started to blog and I said I would blog a picture every week,” said Eisbrenner.
It started off really well, but then as her skills grew better her picture sizes grew bigger and it became every two weeks she would blog a picture, then every month. She still blogs, showing her viewers some of the latest pieces she has been working on.
While there are other techniques that Eisbrenner could learn, and may do one day, her focus remains on graphite pencil art.
“That’s what’s really interesting to me trying to develop that realism, trying to see how real I can make it look, sometimes better than a photograph,” said Eisbrenner.
She has done some commission work which she says has both been great and challenging, and last year she began going to markets to showcase, and sell, her work. Eisbrenner has also donated different pieces to organizations to auction off in fundraisers.
“I enjoy that, I enjoy giving back especially if it has to do with community because this is where we live and the more we’re part of our community, and the more we can put into it, the more we’re going to get out of it,” said Eisbrenner.
She is also considering offering art classes to adults and children in the community.
“I love learning, and I also love teaching so to be able to teach other people drawing basics, because I think everybody can draw, they just need to look at things right,” said Eisbrenner.
She starts looking for shapes and how it is comparing to what’s around it, in front of it, behind it and then looking at the perspective which she said is huge for getting things right.
Anyone interested in learning to draw with Eisbrenner can give her a call at 403-324-4178, or keep an eye on her website artfeature.ca. On the website you can also keep up-to-date on what she is working on currently.