The Ballpoint Pen Drawings of Helena Hauss

Ballpoint pen drawings of Helena Hauss

Remember those students who would doodle impressively in the margins of their three hole punch notebooks with a ballpoint pen? One of those talented folks was probably Helena Hauss. Exploring themes such as innocence lost, girlhood, nostalgia, rebellion and vice, the 29 year old artist wields a ballpoint pen like a magic wand, creating intensely detailed drawings.

Helena Hauss Pen Drawings

ballpoint pen drawings
Helena Hauss, Cover Girl, ballpoint pen.

What at first appear as drawings of teens gleefully experiencing life, there is a subtext to her work. Exploring sexuality, rebelliousness and the breaking of social mores is a vital part of growing up and Helena makes sure to address these in her ballpoint pen illustrations. Helena says her art “aims to use self-deprecation and satire as a way to own up to those labels rather that shy away from them, and thus, put on display the very thing that others would scorn at.”

Helena Hauss art
Helena Hauss, Midnight Lust, Ballpoint pen
The Discovery by helena hauss
Helena Hauss, The Discovery, ballpoint pen
helena hauss the piercing
Helena Hauss, The Piercing, ballpoint pen

Using satire as a weapon against one’s own inner demons, Helena describes her work as also rejecting a pre-established set of codes of social conventions, breaking down a systemic derogatory social hierarchy. Her subjects not only own up to their short-comings or the labels placed upon them by others, but they embrace them unapologetically and revel in them instead.

skinny bitch drawing
Helena Hauss, Mia, ballpoint pen

A drawing like Mia, shown above, takes Helena about 350 hours to complete. You can watch a time-lapse video of her creating Mia here.

ballpoint pen drawings
Helena Hauss, Seven Minutes in Heaven, ballpoint pen

You have to look close at each drawing, to find clues hidden in the details as to what they’re really about: the bright and girly colours may often hide a darker side. It is deceiving, which in a way is the very essence of appearances : too often are we seen through a sheen of perfection we aim to display to the world, hiding our darker truth. I focus on what it means to become one’s self while refusing to be tamed and straying away from the idea of an unblemished self : It’s about faults, and owning them. – Helena Hauss

Sleeping Beauty ballpoint pen
Helena Hauss, Sleeping Beauty, ballpoint pen and yellow pencil
The fight 2015
Helena Hauss, The Fight, ballpoint pen
helena hauss illustrations
shown at top: Helena Hauss, Afternoon Delight, ballpoint pen

Helena Hauss

all images courtesy of Helena Hauss