Dillon Sprague isn’t quite sure whether he’s a real artist or just a poseur who makes art.

If you look at his work, though, rest assured you’ll see that even though he’s a newbie to the craft, what Sprague creates art – ethereal, smoky art.

"I don’t know whether I’m an artist, it’s just something I’ve always done,” said the Colorado native living in Sitka. "I was encouraged as a kid. But for the past ten years, I haven’t really done any art. I feel a little like it's imposter syndrome trying to make art professionally.”

Sprague’s attitude is not false modesty. It’s just that he is trying to find his footing as a new artist. But what he creates may be some of the most unusual artistry in the world.

To think his portraits of ravens and whales and other Alaskan wildlife are something he stumbled upon through experimentation with smoke from a candle flame.

"I knew a friend about ten years back who used smoke on glass, and I wanted to try it, but it didn’t work so well,” he said. "Through trial and error, I tried it on paper. I tried to do it a couple of ways until I decided to smooth out the paper and had much more success.”

Aside from his day job, he creates art when he has time. He has also made violins but was discouraged after a professional told him his first fiddle didn’t measure up.

Sprague, who worked as a deckhand before trying his hand at art, decided to use his latent artistic abilities to represent the natural beauty of The Last Frontier in drawings where he adopted the "Fumage” technique of enhancing his drawings. He is a woodworker by trade when he’s not creating spectacular art and doing furniture repair.

Sprague sketches an animal image and uses a candle while carefully directing the flame toward the drawing so that it is covered in soot. He then uses a knife or paintbrush to scrape away the excess soot and sharpen the image. He then sprays lacquer on the artwork, so it is not damaged by contact or environmental conditions.

Sprague says the use of candles can be difficult to predict, and he uses great caution in enhancing his drawings using, well, fire. The entire process of creating his images by fumage takes about 20 hours, he said.

"First, what I do is draw the form of a raven, I’ll outline the image of the bird, then I cut it out so that I have an image to work with, and I use knives or paint brushes to get rid of the excess soot” while still maintaining the integrity of the drawing.

"You just don’t know what the smoke is going to do on the page. It’s unpredictable and organic.”

The results are a smoky look that almost shows the movement of the subject, whether it’s a whale, raven, or other magnificent creature of the Alaskan wilderness.

"The first thing I did was a raven, and I’ve done a few whales,” he said; he added that his love of Alaska only increases when he sees whales in the water near the local grocery store. "I’ve done salmon and bald eagles, trying to use Alaska-themed things like that.”

Sprague said he is working to create Alaskan landscapes using fumage, but so far, he hasn’t been satisfied with the results. Still, his Alaskan animal creations are almost as magnificent as his animal subjects.

"This is the first time I’ve ever been a professional artist,” Sprague said. "I’ve never been part of the artist community. I’m part of a co-op with twenty other artists where we rent wall space for showings. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe it’s just a hobby. Whether I can make it as a professional artist remains to be seen.”

If Sprague is unsure of himself as an artist, there is certainly no need.

His fumage illustrations are truly the works of an artist and can be found on Voyij.com