Wildlife artist of the Year 2013

The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation Wildlife Artist of the Year Competition has been running for the last five years attracting entries from around the world in all artistic media. With seven fabulous categories and a top prize of £10,000 this event is now firmly established in the wildlife art event calendar.

Follow the links below to find out how to enter.

The 2013 event will take place at the Mall Galleries, London from 3-8 June.
Mon 3 June - Private Preview
Tues 4 - Sat 8 June - 10am-5pm (4pm Sat) FREE entry

More info at http://www.davidshepherd.org/way/

My wife Donna has recently broken her wrist and wanted me to paint something appropriate on her plaster cast. We talked about painting an opening through the plaster to reveal a terminator style machine (all cogs and pistons and shiny metal), and then we thought of a Dalek gun from Dr Who, but ended up with something more fitting - two hands painted on wet plaster. I hope Michelangelo would approve!

Why Do We Stop Drawing?

 We've got our friends with their four young children staying with us at the moment, and when I got up this morning I couldn't get any breakfast for a while because they were all drawing and colouring in on the dining room table. Children love to draw and paint and their creativity is unlimited. But as adults we get scared of putting pencil to paper, and say "I can't even draw a stick man!"


So why and when does this love of drawing fade out of our lives?  

Is it when we are told in school that we are no good at art? Or do we loose our drawing inhibitions during our teenage years when we try to become just like all our friends? Or are we afraid of what other people will say about our pictures?


Whatever the reason is, it often takes a long time for adults to begin to paint again, or even to get get the desire to paint in the first place. But with gentle encouragement and a few helpful tips, we can all recover the joy of creating a painting, just like when we were young.

Artists Create Giant Portraits on Live Grass

Just came across this and thought you might like it. Get the lawnmowers out!

Ackroyd & Harvey. Myles, Basia, Nath and Alesha, four panels, 3.8 m x 1.7 m, The Big Chill Festival, Eastnor Castle, England. 2007

For the next 7 days (ending July 20th 2012) I've got a 50% sale on all my courses! Just go to http://www.artclasspro.com/#/half-price-offer/4564235940 to get your painting course at half the normal price!!

Urban Sketchers.org

I've just come across this blog which features sketches and often equally colorful stories behind the scenes by 100 invited artists in more than 30 countries around the world. Some are architects and illustrators, others are graphic designers, web developers, painters or educators, all sharing the same passion for drawing on location.
Urban Sketchers started online as a flickr group in 2007 and later became a nonprofit organization. Our mission as a nonprofit is to raise the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel. We aim to show the world, one drawing at a time.

It's a great source of ideas and inspiration for sketching, as everyone has a unique and different style - take a look at the blog; you won't be disappointed.

 Painting a Commission

I was recently asked to paint the old Spanish farmhouse where a friend of mine used to live with her family. She took me out to see it on a rather dull overcast day, and I have to say that at first glance I was a bit underwhelmed at the prospect of creating an interesting painting out of what was - to me at least - an uninspiring building. It really wasn't that interesting, and I wondered how I could come up with a painting that she and the family could enjoy. My friend had asked me to paint it in reds, yellows and oranges as those colours would fit into the colour scheme of the living room where it was to be hung.

 I began by doing a pencil sketch to get the tones right and to see if it would work as a painting, and to my surprise it began to look quite promising!

So I then used the sketch (rather than the photo) to work from. I was working in oils on a 16" x 20" stretched canvas and began by giving the whole canvas a green-blue undercoat, onto which I sketched the outline in burnt sienna.



Then I painted the shadow areas in a pale purple and the sunlit areas in pale yellow, before adding a dryish mix of off-white on top, making sure that the under colours showed through. this created the effect of the old walls. The roof was painted very simply and I didn't get too involved in the detail. The foreground was just a rough brushwork of different colours.






The wonderful thing was that the family loved it. Even though the colours were not realistic and the shape of the building had changed a bit, and there was so little detail, they still got really excited about it.
"That's the window we had to break in through when we lost our keys!", said one of the daughters. "That was my room!", said the other. "This will remind us of our house forever", said mum.

My advice to you in situations like this would be to work from a pencil sketch rather than slavishly trying to copy a photo. You are then much more free to create ART rather than a copy of a bad photo.

Miro Painting Sells for record $36.9!

Sotheby's set a new auction record for Spanish artist Joan Miro on Tuesday 19th July 2012 when his 1927 painting "Peinture (Etoile Bleue)" fetched $36.9 million.

My question is - where did I go wrong?!

New website being created.

I'm in the process of creating a new and much more arty looking website for my courses, which you can now find at www.artclasspro.com. 
In time it will replace www.learntodo.co.uk, but for now you can visit either or both of these websites to peruse my courses and perhaps buy one!
Please take a look at the new site and let me know what you think.