• Name: Shantell Martin
• Primary Location: Tokyo
• Affiliations: Lightrhythm
• Releases: Notations02:Interustic, Koob’s: Full album (tape, hands, legs, perspex, lci, noname, youme, koob’s, interustic, ora, spiderdrawing)
• Website: shantellmartin.com

Shantell Martin has pursued a multi disciplinary career since graduating from Central Saint Martins in Graphic Design/Illustration in 2003. Currently based in Tokyo, she has expanded her fields of drawing pushing the boundaries of Live Illustration stretching over to fashion collaborations, interiors and plain pen on paper.

“My illustrations all tell a story, but it’s left to the viewer to interpret what it all means in their own natural way.”

Shantell collaborates with designers, musicians, DJs and her audience to produce fresh, continually evolving art and design work that challenge, impress and inspire. Her drawings have been incorporated into various fashion collections; Encadreurs Tokyo, Beyond the Valley London. She has been commissioned to let her lines flow over the interiors of Flaneur café, Tokyo. The drawings themselves are extremely detailed with an explosion of patterns and are visually stimulating depictions of activities. Besides her traditional drawings of pen on paper, Shantell’s main activity lies within live drawing.

Deeply connected in the international Tokyo design scene, she has initiated two original art forms of live drawing which allow her to bring her work to a wider, club-going audience and provide a “visual connection between the audience and the performers”.
One, which she calls PPP (pen, paper, projector) allows her to draw traditionally on paper, connected to a visual projector which reflects her drawing onto the screens of an event space. The walls are covered with an interconnected veil of hallucinatory lines and images. The mix of sounds and live performance is fascinating for the viewer to watch. The slow pace of her drawing evolves, builds and finally grows into a conclusive artwork.
The other preferred way of drawing is Live Club Illustration (LCI) this involves a Wacom tablet connected to one or more projectors enabling Shantell to draw and erase live at events, shift her imagery around, continue different lines with the use of negative space and audience interaction.

“The lines are spontaneous and intuitive, drawing for me is a line that flows between the past and the future without touching the sides.”

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