Sarah Mari Shaboyan captures the energy and detail of busy scenes with coloured pencils and markers

Born in Armenia to a family with a deep love for the arts – an art collector father and a linguist mother – Sarah Mari Shaboyan started drawing before she could even walk. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that I wanted to become an artist,” she tells us. Having studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Yerevan, before pursuing art courses in France and Moscow, her work now draws on all the cityscapes, interiors and scenes in nature that she has been living amidst throughout the years.

Inspired by the likes of Saul Steinberg – most known for his work with The New Yorker – and Miroslav Sasek’s This Is… books that introduce children to cities worldwide, it is clear that Sarah is fond of people and places. And, with a practice that encompasses editorial illustration, book illustrations, and a variety of commercial projects, she is still driven by her foundations. “My main passion in art is coloured pencils and markers. Nothing inspires me more than the paper texture,” she tells us. When looking at her work you get a real sense that she is documenting what is in front of her, and that it is genuine, but you also feel her imagination through her jolly and fluid approach to mark-making. An approach that will make us wonder: How would the artist draw our cities, our landscapes, and spaces?