Chris Hinton — Artist

Illustration, oil, and product design — made to be looked at slowly.

0+ Years making work

0 Mediums — digital · traditional · product

Pinehurst Official resort vendor

Art that asks you to stop, look, and take something with you.

A picture is worth making only if it leaves something behind. I work for the feeling that arrives a second after you look — the story you finish on your own.

Interior of a salvaged spacecraft cockpit, hand-drawn and digitally painted.

Digital Illustration

Worlds you can walk into — ships, cities, and the people who live in them. Drawn by hand, finished on the screen.

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Pink dogwood blossoms painted in close crop against white.

Traditional Painting

Oil, graphite, and paper. Slower work, made at arm's length — flowers, landmarks, and portraits of things worth keeping.

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Coffee bag package design lying on burlap, illustrated label facing up.

Product & Package Design

Art that has to survive a shelf. Labels, cards, and prints built to hold up under a barcode and a price tag.

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We're Going Down Sketchbook ink → finished panel

The short version

I have been drawing for as long as I have been able to hold something to draw with. It was never a phase I grew out of or a skill I picked up on the way to something else — it is the thing I am for.

Most pieces start the same way: a ballpoint sketch in a book that never leaves the house, drawn badly and fast, before the idea has a chance to talk me out of it. What survives that page gets built properly — in paint, in pencil, or on the screen.

What I am after is a reaction. Not admiration for the craft, though the craft has to be there. I want the picture to hand you a feeling or the front half of a story and then get out of the way so you can finish it yourself.

If a piece stops you for a moment and you carry a little of it out the door with you, it worked.

— Chris

In the shops

Pinehurst Resort

An official vendor to the resort — greeting cards, coloring books, and art prints carried in its retail shops. The same landmarks the members walk past every day, drawn by hand and then made into something they can take home.