The first painting. Creating a grid of squares as a guide to accurately sketch the original image.
Long hours for many days building up the painting layer by layer.
The first finished painting! The start of a long, exciting adventure for me…
Look no squares! In later years I speeded up the process by projecting the photo I was working from onto the the canvas and then sketch in the basic shapes as a guide for the painting process.
Many hours over many days of building up the layers and tones of the painting.
and finally….the finished portrait (author Terry Pratchett)
How It All Began
In 2006, I was looking for a new direction in life and whilst walking through an art gallery in my home town, I was inspired to buy a canvas and some paints and see what I could achieve.
I knew it would be a long process so I chose a subject that was dear to my heart, the film Lord of The Rings.
I chose a scene from the film that I felt was possible to paint. Then the process began of creating the image on the canvas. Firstly, printing out the image and creating a grid of squares on the print, then drawing the same number of squares on the canvas. A basic technique used by many beginners in art.
Then began the process of observing all the squares on the print and sketching all the lines and shapes that transversed each square onto the canvas. A process that took over 3 hours.
Once that stage was complete it was time to open the tubes of paint and pick up a brush!
Painting the background first and working towards the foreground, building up many layers of colours and tones until the painting was complete, some 50 hours later!
Next came my first attempt at painting a portrait, a scene from the same film, using the same techniques. When the portrait of Elijah Wood was complete, my friend Rebecca in Belgium suggested she came over to England and together we could try to meet Elijah and ask him to autograph the portrait.
(Read the Elijah Wood portrait page for the full story of mine and Rebecca’s amazing endeavour to meet Elijah).
This was the beginning of an 8 year adventure that inspired me to create many more paintings and meet many more actors and musicians.
As the years passed and I became more confident with my painting, I used a projector to project the initial image onto the canvas and I could do an elementary sketch of the basic shapes on the canvas, significantly reducing the time for this stage of the painting.
In time, I became more proficient with the painting process and reduced the time of a portrait down to about 30 hours of work for each painting.
(To see photos of the various stages of my painting process, click on the pages for Terry Pratchett, Julia Roberts, plus animal portraits of Wolf, Sasha, Cindy, Daisy. There are also video montages of my painting processes for Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford).
But that was only half the story!
Then began the many endeavours to meet the actors and musicians and ask for their autograph on my paintings.
Rising before dawn, travelling for many hours, waiting all day in all kinds of weather and then the gamble of ‘will they or won’t they’ sign!
Thankfully the majority of the people I met did indeed sign the paintings and, before long, I found myself having exhibitions and appearing in local newspapers, then national magazines, and even a national TV show in Europe.
After 8 years of intense work and some 90 paintings later, I decided it was time to end this chapter of my life and begin a new one…
Having met many actors during the years as an artist, this inspired me to see what I could achieve as an actor. I joined an acting improvisation class, which led to attaining a lead role in a local theatre production of a Charles Dicken’s classic, which then led to creating my own theatre company with a group of friends and also venturing into local film productions and a brief excursion into television and background acting in major films.
The journey continues…