9 Artists We Love Creating Beautiful Works On Paper!

Allie Webb

Allie Webb’s linocut prints are recognisable by both her bold style and subject matter. The Sydney-based multi-disciplinary artist often centres her still-life artworks around the rituals and ‘routines’ of food, depicting scenes around a dining table or a series of classic ingredients that combine to make a delicious meal.

She says it’s all about finding the ‘beauty in the banal moments of the everyday’, rearranging objects into strong shapes, which she carefully hand-carves into lino to create her graphic prints!

Price range: $1200 – $3800

Where to buy: Olsen Gallery

Chanel Sohier

Sicilian-Australian visual artist Chanel Sohier works in a figurative style across painting and drawing, bringing an abstract touch to her emotive landscapes with soft blurs of green and pastel hues.

Lately, she’s also been exploring still-life, using everything from oil paint, to graphite, colour pencil and ballpoint pens in her layered works, with a special focus capturing the specific ‘feelings’ of a moment in time.

Price range: $100 – $1000

Where to buy: Directly through Chanel’s website

Emmanuelle McGlade

Emmanuelle McGlade’s work proves how even the most simple concepts can become the most striking. There’s something so calming about her soft pastel drawings, featuring patterns of intricate, coloured lines like a dynamic patchwork on paper — which she uses to explore the lines between balance and imbalance, order and disorder.

‘I love the immediacy and tactile qualities of paper, and its fragile and delicate nature which compliments the inherent lightness of my work,’ Emmanuelle says.

Price range: $350 – $2000

Where to buy: Gallery Raye, Pepite, or contact Emmanuelle directly through Instagram and email

Evie Cahir

You might recognise Evie Cahirs‘ name from this studio visit where we shared her gorgeous gradient works on paper, but she’s also a talented illustrator. From her inner-city Melbourne studio, Evie draws vibrant moments — think pretty streetscapes or market isles.

Using warm hues and the familiar textures of pencil on paper, she fills these scenes with memory and nostalgia!

Price range: $400 – $5000

Where to buy: Directly through Evie’s website

Tamsin Ainslie

Illustrator Tamsin Ainslie has illustrated more than 50 children’s books and has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Growing up in the UK (where her grandmother was a well-known illustrator) she was encouraged to tell stories by putting pencil to paper.

Now living in Northern NSW, Tamsin started The Tiny Stockroom in 2016 where she sells one bite-sized artwork a day, from tiny pencils to chocolate freckles and flowers. She’s also in the process of starting a tiny gallery space from an old deli window called Lunch Box Gallery!

Price range: $45 – $1000

Where to buy: On Instagram at @thetinystockroom

Julia Stewart

Julia Stewart is one of our favourite emerging artists of the moment. While she first started creating artworks on paper as sketches or studies for larger oil paintings during her studies at VCA, over time she’s come to love the medium for its visible textures and depth it brings to her brushstrokes.

‘I like that on paper you can achieve a softness and subtlety of colour,’ Julia says.

Price range: $600 – $800

Where to buy: Sunday Salon website and in an upcoming exhibition in February

Bella McGoldrick

Bella McGoldrick’s hyper-realistic still-life drawings look more like fine art photography than the result of putting coloured pencils to paper, but that’s what makes them so magical. Her talent and attention to detail turns simple objects like a unwrapped bar of soap or a melting iced coffee into a masterpiece, drawing inspiration from her travels to Italy, Japan, France and beyond.

‘I hope to show the human involvement in the still life compositions, play with a little nostalgia, a little decadence, and a good dose of white negative space to give the objects their moment,’ Bella says.

Price range: $5000 – $40000 (prints around $700)

Where to buy: Directly though Bella’s website, next drop December 4

Kathryn Dolby

New South Wales-based artist Kathryn Dolby paints nature with translucent, washy layers of colour and gestural brushstrokes. After becoming a mother, she says paper has become her preferred medium for creating small, ‘achievable’ artworks.

There’s a quiet intimacy to her style, reflecting the inspirations she finds ‘looking through windows, the shifting seasons of nature’ and the rich colours of landscapes.

Price range: $600 – $1800

Where to buy: Otomys

Marc Martin

If you’ve been following TDF for a while, you already know the beauty of Marc Martin’s detailed streetscapes and playful children’s book characters. The Melbourne artist, illustrator, and author turned to creating on paper after looking for a reprieve to creating digital artworks — and eight years later, he’s a well-known master of watercolour painting!

‘Watercolour paint on paper can be quite unforgiving and unpredictable,’ he says. ‘It really forces you to think about every brush stroke and to embrace the unexpected, which is why I love it!’

Price range: $800 – $2000

Where to buy: Directly though Marc’s website