Canvassed Artist Feature: Ailsa Craigen
In our micro-blog series, we feature one of the distinct Canadian artists taking part in Canvassed.
We have collaborated with these unique artists to interpret your floral arrangement into lasting compositions.
Ailsa Craigen
Ailsa Craigen is an Illustrator, who specializes in Ink Sketch, and the talented artist behind Pen to Papier.
Alisa began Pen to Papier to chronicle her Sketch A Day Series -- a journey of creating 365 ink sketches of places and things. She is inspired by the built environment around her or handheld objects -- the world around us, big and small. While these two inspirations may contrast, she enjoys finding the details that others would miss without looking closely.
Most of what she chooses to draw comes from her travel and sketching what moves her. During the first few months of her Sketch A Day Series, Ailsa was living in the Netherlands finishing her masters degree, while the remaining months of her series were drawn after moving back to Toronto. She enjoys comparing her subject matter of the two different countries,and when looking at her work, you can see the different environments influencing her hand. Her illustrations are minimal but full of detail. The perfect sketch art for any wall.
I met Alisa, before Canvassed was even a thought that crossed my mind, when she drew one of my floral arrangements as part of her Sketch A Day Series. Humbled that she found the details in my work worthy of her ink, she was quickly one of the artists I approached for this collaboration.
Ink is not her sole medium, Ailsa likes to dabble with digital drawing and watercolor. However, throughout architecture school she found herself sketching mostly in pen and has gravitated to that medium ever since.
Ottawa-born, she attended Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada for her Bachelor of Architectural Science (Co-op) and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands for her Master of Science in Architecture. Today she works for an architectural company. The structures that surround us have always been what her heart, eyes, and hands are drawn to. An interesting fact I discovered about Ailsa’s process is that she likes to watch shows with a lot of dialogue in the background while drawing.
Like all of the artists who have joined Canvassed, I wanted to know why Ailsa agreed to collaborate with me. Ailsa is not only looking forward to branching out her style and trying something new that forces one’s creative growth, she is excited to see how the other artists involved in Canvassed interpret floral arrangements. She finds creative inspiration in how other people see things.
Ailsa’s work has been featured in spaces across Toronto such as Mallo, Goldstruck and Lovt Studio.
Ailsa currently lives and works in Toronto, ON.
To commission Ailsa Craigen as your artist, complete the Canvassed Design Form.
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