During her years in high school and in college, Samantha Hall tried just about every art medium out there — but one in particular captured her heart. “As soon as I tried colored pencil, I knew that was the medium I was supposed to do, and I never looked back,” says Hall, who graduated from Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids with a BFA in illustration. After graduation, she says her intention was to make a living as an artist. So, as a freelancer, she illustrated children’s books for a while. “But doing kind of the same thing for 30 pages wasn’t fun,” Hall says, “so I started to create my own work.”
Today, she draws what she wants and is making a living as an artist working out of her home studio near Bellaire. Her sense of place shows up everywhere in her art: Consider her Forage and Michigan Rocks/Gems series, both of which speak volumes of the intriguing nuances of northern Michigan. A morel’s creamy lightness complements the rich, deep browns of its dimensional surface, while tiny specks of white adhere to a fiddlehead’s stem, surrounding pointy leaves — each so small, but showcasing dark, light, and medium hues, and treating the viewer to fascinating details. Meanwhile, serene blues pop from a Leland blue stone, while magical line work stretches here and there atop a Petoskey stone.
Hall and her husband, Joe, didn’t always live in northern Michigan, but after traveling to the region over the years from Grand Rapids, they fell in love with its vibe. When Hall graduated, they decided to make a permanent move about 35 miles northeast of Traverse City, in Antrim County. “We’re five minutes from beautiful Torch Lake,” the artist enthuses.
Using combinations of the 300 Prismacolor-brand pencils in her collection, Hall turns out astonishing works that you may see at farmers markets (including the Bellaire and Boyne City farmers markets) or at art fairs around northern Michigan. “I also have about 500 pencil stubs that I keep in a jar and take with me to my shows,” she shares. “People don’t understand the colored-pencil medium, and this is one way to show them. Some have asked, Is it watercolor? Digital? AI?” Hall says she travels to about 40 shows and markets per year, mostly during warmer months. In the winter and early spring, she contemplates and works on new projects.
Hall’s signature look often features the subject with little or no background. “I like the work to be about the subject,” she explains. Her beautiful paper selections (she uses a bristol vellum paper or illustration boards) ensure that her depictions pop. Hall says she loves to draw deer, eagles, bears, and birds, and when she creates loons, she sometimes adds a bit of blue water or a nest beneath them.
“People are crazy about loons. I posted one loon drawing and had at least a hundred messages from people asking if they could buy it,” she laughs.
The artist says the walls in her home don’t feature her work — not even one drawing. “I’m never 100 percent happy with anything I do, so if it were hanging I’d constantly be telling myself what I could do to change it.” Instead, works by her colleagues and peers grace her home.
Hall does admit, though, that her Isle Royale greenstone drawing is one of her favorites. (greenstone, Michigan’s state gem, is very rare and found only in a small area in the Keweenaw Peninsula and on Isle Royale.) “I like the way my greenstone turned out. It was hard, with all those white veins going through the stone.”
Beyond fauna and flora, Hall draws food, and lots of it. “I’m a huge cook and baker, so a lot of the food I make to eat, I’ll draw. Northern Michigan is amazing. In the spring we forage for morels, ramps, and fiddleheads,” which show up on her dinner plate and also in her portfolio. “My life is where I get most of my inspiration,” she says.
When morels pop in the spring, she and her husband will indulge in a mushroom-topped white pizza. “I make a bechamel-style sauce and then roast or sauté the morels and place them on mozzarella.” With thousands of wild leeks growing on the couple’s wooded property, Hall can make ramp butter using her handmade ramp salt. “I use the ramp salt in my sourdough bread, and you see little green flecks in the bread. It’s beautiful.” (She makes ramp salt by dehydrating the leaves, grinding them up, and then mixing them with Kosher or flaky sea salt.)
As for the ins and outs of colored-pencil work, many challenges face the artist during the process. “If you’re working in a light section, you have to be careful not to put too much color down. And if you’re working in a dark section, you can’t put a lot of light pencil down.” Now and then, Hall will use a white gel pen to highlight an area that’s too small for a pencil to fit. She also sharpens her colored pencils regularly throughout the drawing process, depending on the need. “For fur, you have to sharpen every few strokes, but if I’m layering or blending, it’s OK if the tip is soft. There’s a lot of layering and blending in colored-pencil work,” Hall says.
The artist says the medium is generally unforgiving. “There’s not a lot of room for error,” she says. “I only have a couple layers to get it where I want it, or I’ll physically damage the paper. You must get it right, almost right away, and know that you can’t change it if you don’t like it.”
When she’s not drawing whatever inspires her, Hall accepts commission work. She’s especially fond of turning out pet portraits, the smallest of which are about 5 x 7 inches in size. She sells notecards, tea towels, original drawings, prints, and more online. “I do my own printing, using an Epson Artisan printer. I make my cards by printing a 4 x 6 and then inserting it into a notecard so people can easily frame them if they’d like. It’s a card and a gift in one.”
MORE INFORMATION:
To see more of Samantha Hall’s artwork or learn about her classes, visit samanthahallart.com or follow her on Instagram @samanthahallart. Her canine works will be showcased at a new dog park/café/taproom (Two Brothers) that’s scheduled to open in the spring in Traverse City. She was commissioned to draw all of the founding members’ pets.
Picture This!
The Bellaire-based Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology (which works to build strong communities through the intersections of art, farming, ecology, and economy), and the Bellaire and Elk Rapids libraries, have chosen artist Samantha Hall as the illustrator for four visiting writers who will be in the region documenting their experiences.
“Writers go (to Crosshatch) every few months, and for (this group), I’ll be illustrating their works. The final pieces will be coming out (next) summer,” Hall says. The organization’s Antrim Writers Series focuses on the Grass River Natural Area. For more information on this project, visit crosshatch.org.
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