Back in my elementary school days (those crazy ’90s), everyone went wild for mechanical pencils — or, as we called them, “lead pencils,” because I suppose the hysteria induced by clicking and feeding thin rods of graphite into plastic holes was enough to distract us from the fact that pretty much every pencil is a “lead pencil.” The most creative thing we did with them was to pretend they were syringes (a very early and troubling drug-fantasy game that went ignored by our teachers), which is why I’m impressed with the work of Bosnian-born, Milwaukee-based illustrator Boris Pelcer, who is able to create large-scale, cosmic portraits with the pencils we just thought were cool novelty items. Check out some of his work, via BOOOOOOOM!, below.
Image credit: Boris Pelcer
Image credit: Boris Pelcer
Image credit: Boris Pelcer
Image credit: Boris Pelcer
Image credit: Boris Pelcer