Pencil pusher

In his pencil drawings, artist Antonio Pelayo Jr. keeps the viewer guessing if they are photographs or drawings.

Each painstaking work takes Pelayo between 100 to 200 hours to complete, so any one piece may take three to eight months.

“Most people think, when they first look at it, that it’s a photograph,” he said. “But when they come closer, they see it’s just a pencil drawing.”

He describes his work as meticulous and precise.

“Ninety percent of what I do is patience and the rest is skill and talent,” he said.

The 33-year-old Glendale native is showing his work in the Burbank Fine Arts Federation Membership Show opening with a reception on Friday evening at the Creative Arts Center.

Pelayo does his drawings after he gets home from working at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where he is head special effects/ink/painter for the feature animation gallery department. He makes a living painting Disney characters on animation cels, so named for the medium of ink or paint on a sheet of celluloid. The products of his labor are sold at Disney stores and at art cel galleries.

Pelayo said he’s been drawing since he was 2 and is totally self-taught. He has never taken art classes, even while he was a student at Hoover High School, Pelayo said.

“The only thing I’ve done is taken life-drawing workshops at Disney Studios,” he said. “They provide them.”

Although he hasn’t had formal art training, his work is impressive, said Frances Santistevan, gallery director at the Creative Arts Center.

“Antonio is a new, upcoming local artist,” she said. “I understand he is self-taught and he is truly gifted.

“His pencil drawings/illustrations are unbelievable. He is very attentive to detail. His images are almost photographic and yet stylistic. An amazing talent, I expect to be hearing more about Antonio in the future.”

What drives Pelayo to do his own creative works is his passion for art and the fact that his work has been inspiring to other artists, he said.

Urian “Oody” Muro, an 18-year-old senior at Channel Islands High School in Oxnard, is one of Pelayo’s biggest fans.

Muro came across Pelayo’s website when he was a junior in high school. He hadn’t done art since sixth or seventh grade, but after seeing Pelayo’s work, he said he was excited to get back to art.

“Even though his work is black and white, to me, when I looked at them, they were in color for me,” Muro said. “My mind put the colors in his work. When I saw his work, it made me want to do my own work.”

Muro said he was so driven to get back into art, he just had to pick up a pencil and do it.

“I started with graphite lead pencil drawings,” he said. “I’m trying to explore other mediums like oil pastels, colored pencils, acrylic paints and sculpting.”

When he saw how Pelayo had made a career from his artwork, that gave Muro the incentive to do it himself, he said.

Sherri Vandoli, who works with Pelayo at Disney, has seen his pencil works from the beginning, she said.

“When I met him he was just starting out,” she said. “I’ve watched him evolve. He’s amazing. When I look at his work, I can’t stop looking at it because it takes my breath away with the detail. And that’s from the heart. His work is awesome and, as a person, he’s a great guy.”