The Studio
Sketchy Soul is not a print shop and not a filter. It is one artist, a stack of graphite and a lot of hours.
Most portraits start the same way: someone sends a photograph they have looked at a thousand times, and asks whether it can become something you can hang on a wall.
The answer is almost always yes — but only if the drawing does something a print cannot. A photograph records a face. A portrait decides what matters about it: which shadow to deepen, which line to soften, where to let the paper stay white.
That decision-making is the whole job, and it is why every piece here is drawn by hand. No AI generation, no traced projection, no filter with a pencil texture on top. Just graphite, charcoal or colour pencil on archival paper, built up over days.
Working from Colombo, portraits from this studio now hang in homes across a few dozen countries — birthdays, anniversaries, memorials, and a surprising number of very well-loved dogs.
In Practice
Work is queued, not batched. Your piece gets undivided attention from first line to final signature.
Acid-free 200–300gsm paper, artist-grade graphite and pigment. A portrait made now should still look right in fifty years.
You approve the sketch, then the finish. Progress photos land in your inbox along the way.
Say Hello
Send the photo you have in mind and you will hear back — usually the same day — with an honest view on whether it will make a good drawing.