Dena Cooper

Clients who work with Dena marvel at her pencilling skills. Specialising in portraiture, she captures the faces of leading cultural figures, conveying their personalities with a light touch and a great sense of humanity. Based in New York, she enjoys covering issues such as the environment, racial and gender equality, and showing strong women with a unique perspective in her work. With a background in fashion illustration, Dena’s focus has drawn back to include the wider cultural sphere, and she likes to explore the world through travel, food and architecture. Before becoming an illustrator, she studied design theory at Radford University and started her career as a womenswear designer.

Approach

Using a graphite pencil, precision erasers and an iPad with Procreate, Dena uses both traditional and digital techniques, blending tonal pencil drawings, pops of colour and sometimes found imagery to create collaged compositions.

Key software

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Fresco; Procreate

Style

Dena’s talent for drawing enables her to achieve photorealistic portraits, rendered in a light hand. Ramping up the intensity of the detail towards the focal point of an image draws the viewer in, while looser sketching and mark making in the background add colour, warmth and individuality to the work.

Awards

2020 – FIDA Commercial Fashion Illustration Award