Alyona Nicklesen

This is a great story. I got a call on the phone one day and it was this demure voice with a pronounced Russian accent. Actually, Alyona Nickelsen is Ukrainian...any way she wanted to know if we could help her with a problem.

Alyona had to work in an office chair and would get a sore back bending over her work for more than about a half-hour. It was frustrating for her because she would be engrossed in a work and have to stop to give her back a rest. Pain pills were not the answer and she was having a hard time.

She found out about us through Colored Pencil Magazine. They told her about us and she called. We had a very nice conversation and we said, "Sure, we can work something out for you." After I hung up the phone, my thought was, 'how do we do this?' We sat around in the shop coming up with ideas on how to solve the problem. The Orbital Easel lets you put your work where you want it. Alyona can now work for long stints at a time and without the agonizing back pain. We have sent Easels to other parts of the US and the world to people with similar problems.

You can see Alyona as the first slide on our home page. She has a large size Orbital Easel in canvas format because she does colored pencil paintings on hard media like canvas board.

Alyona started her passion in charcoal and graphite and now does truly wonderful work in colored pencil. She is the author of Colored Pencil Painting Bible - a best selling, all-inclusive book on colored pencil art. She also has several fine instructional videos as well. As of the end of summer 2015 she is finishing up the manuscript for a new book on colored pencil technique focusing on portraiture. We wanted to show some examples of Alyona's amazing work. She said we could. Oh, yeah check out her website Brush and Pencil.

Дякую Алёна - Thank you, Alyona - that is as close to Ukrainian as I can get.