Bio

Where it all began

My earliest memory of drawing takes me back to when I was around nine years of age. I recall with some strange fascination, how my class mates and teachers were impressed with what I was able to draw.
In my younger years I generally did not consider what I could do as being anything of significance, moreover I felt that being able to create a likeness on paper as 'just a case of drawing what you see'. Time has taught me that whilst this statement may be partly true there has to be some degree of 'skill' present to interpret the object onto the paper with a level of accuracy that attracts attention.
School afforded me two really good friends; drawing companions - I felt our abilities were equal. It was with these fellow class mates, that, as the teacher read a story to the class at the end of each day, we would sit quietly drawing, learning and honing our skills - mostly drawing animals.

Art, to me is an opportunity to escape and be absorbed in a single piece of work. To look closer at something than I would normally do. The pride in the finished piece and the pleasure it brings to others.

On the career path

As I came to the end of Secondary school, I can recall the day I had to visit the Careers person. Having heard that most of my classmates had had dull experiences I held little hope of an interesting and useful outcome - how wrong I was. The Careers Persons' opening question was to see if I had already decided on a career path - I had not. I had thought about becoming an architect but had since gone off the idea. The teacher enquired as to what I would like to do or what I was good at. That was easy - "I like drawing and painting, but there is no way I can make a career out of that" I said. She then passed me a brochure for a local Art College and my career path was laid out.

I studied Graphic Design and Photography. It afforded me a commercial outlet for being creative. As well as graphic design, I learnt about typography, photography, print, printing and life drawing and art history too. The time there and the teachers helped to open my mind to explore new and different ideas (think outside the box so to speak, in fact so far out of the box on some occasions). I tried new techniques such as Airbrush - Athena Posters were big in the 80's and provided a style that Airbrush worked well for.

Owning art is about enjoying the piece every time you pass by it.
To enjoy from a distance and to relish in the marks and strokes of the artist when you delve in for a closer look.

I worked for many years in Graphic Design Studios and enjoyed and learnt so much. It provided a creative output in more ways than I can think to write here. Building a career, getting a home, and starting a family all conspired to distract me from painting or drawing; save the odd picture every few years. Over the years I worked in a few varied creative ways; embroidery producing designs for some very big international Brands and Clients. Building websites for similarly big hitting clients and even a little Interior Design.

To me, if you are a creative type, you can put your hand to anything that aligns with colour, light, composition, so the next steps into filming should be no surprise.

Here and now

So here we are today. I have a full satchel of creative skills. My main focus these days is running my filming and video business (www.yorkshireweddingfilms.com) where I produce wedding films, commercial videos and music videos.

My long time dream in life was to find a nice old lighthouse or house on the top of a cliff with studio that has 360 degree views from which to paint, draw. Whilst I may not ever find that place to work from, I have now found myself in a position where I can draw on a fairly regular basis. This means I can improve my skills and see what a wider audience makes of what I draw.

Covid, Lockdown and onto Digital Drawing

During the Covid-19 Lockdown like many others, my workload (filming wedding and such) dried up. After attending to what I could to help streamline and prepare my business processes, I happened upon a Graphic Tablet (my neighbour is also an Artist and was upgrading). I purchased it from him as something to try out and fill a little time. Quickly I discovered I really enjoyed this new way of working and started to push myself further with what I could achieve with it. I loved the chance to work in colour and I found that for it it worked well to create movie poster style designs. The ability to zoom into the work provided a chance to attain a level of detail that I did not achieve in my pencil work. You can see them on the Gallery Page and a small selection are available as Limited Edition Fine Art Prints to purchase.

On a professional level

In 2014 I started working for myself offering my creative skills in the form of videography. My time is split between filming beautiful wedding films for couples and creating commercial video work and music videos. You can learn more about my filming over here: www.red-lime.co.uk Some of my clients also benefit from my over 35 years as a Graphic designer and use my services to create artwork, logos, or to support the filming or photography work I undertake for them.

All in all, I lead a pretty creative life!