For Felix the eyes have it

Felix Conlan, 14, loves graphite pencil sketching, especially when the subject is eyes and working with the details around them. He’s also a youth art competition winner, and is raffling his work to help fund a trip to Japan.

While the rest of his family members are musicians, 14-yearold Felix Conlan has backed away from the tradition.

Instead, the Timaru artist decided to branch out into the world of sketching, producing a series of stunning graphite pencil eyes showing spectacular detail and things ‘‘a lot of people wouldn’t notice’’.

And that work is being recognised – Felix was recently named the supreme winner at the YMCA Mid and South Canterbury VOICE Youth Art Project and Exhibition, also winning the drawing award, and is now exhibiting at Timaru’s Mrs M’s Cafe, using his art skills to raise money for an upcoming school trip to Japan.

Felix has also drawn a graphite sketch of a train at Pleasant Point that he is raffling off at the cafe to raise money for Japan.

A student at Mountainview High School, Felix began studying Japanese about a year ago and said he was excited to be going there in January, to immerse himself in the language.

Always drawing as a young boy, Felix said he had started to take his art more seriously from the age of 7 and after moving to Timaru, from Christchurch, last year he took up lessons with South Canterbury artist Wayne Patrick.

‘‘I owe a lot to Wayne. He’s really helped me,’’ Felix said.

While his preferred medium is graphite pencil sketching, he liked pastels ‘‘for a bit of fun’’.

‘‘Graphite is my passion.

‘‘I was always an arty kid, but I have also always been a good observer and that comes in handy.’’

Those observations had also led to his sketches of eyes.

‘‘There’s so much detail with eyes. Often no-one really notices them. I find it really fun to put in the details that they wouldn’t really see.’’

Felix said he was surprised to win the VOICE top award.

Eventually, Felix hopes to incorporate art into his career and has been told he should get into tattoo work.

For now, he is thankful to Mrs M’s owner Mitch George, for helping him towards his fundraising target, and his art teacher.