Sports, westerns and human connection: Clémentine Oberkampf tells it all in her pencil drawings

The illustrator Clémentine Oberkampf has an impressive ability to perk up climactic events with her coloured pencils. Olympians hold hands after a win; a western plays on a ‘90s Sony television; and suited figures stop to console one and other. With a focus on subjects like dogs, sports, childhood pastimes, cinema and pop culture, viewing her works will make you tap into your own bank of memories.

Enjoying the “possibilities of layering”, the illustrator experiments with the different ways to achieve depth, brightness, and dense colours or very thin transparent layers, at every turn, “all permitted by a childish tool you can fit in a case, it’s like magic”, she tells us. But despite all of this, she says her process is “very simple”, consisting of scrolling on her phone, watching movies, television series, and following them up with “to-draw” lists, picking from the bullet points when deciding what to draw.

Influenced by social media, ‘90s fashion, old sports events footage, the news and Getty Images (see her brilliant drawings of its archive complete with its famous grey watermark on top) Clémentine is truly a champion of all things absurd, humorous and nostalgic.