It’s funny to look back on these now as my way of drawing hasn’t really changed since then and I was never actually taught how to draw, it was just in me already. 

I have since experimented with different styles and mediums in my other art but I used coloured pencils for portraits for many years. 

When I changed to pastels this year there was a lot of learning to do regarding different types of pastel and the many ways to use it. I am still experimenting and as long as I’m having fun I will continue to create…

Click on any thumbnail to see a larger image…

Above you can see drawings I did as a teenager. The middle one is of the famous model Twiggy and the other two are from ads in magazines, it was the fabric folds that made me want to draw those. 

Below are some of my old drawings and commissions from many years ago. I used watercolour pencils on watercolour paper. The bumpy surface you can see on the two portraits of the young girl, my daughter, gave them a textured and less flat look. The other pictures are old photocopies I found in my folio but it shows you my style from back in those days. 

I went through a stage where I was doing a lot of illustrations in a pointillism style. This is where the image is made up purely of dots. This was fun to create at the time but it would drive me doolally to attempt it these days.

I think my love of design and my career in graphics led me to drawing and illustrations rather than painting. In between commissioned portraits I liked to draw wildlife using my coloured pencils on watercolour paper that had a nice texture to it. Here you can see a commission of a Siamese cat and two of my favourite drawings that sold at an art exhibition. 

I did dabble occasionally with paint. I even went through an ‘abstract’ phase which was fun and I sold a selection of large canvases to a company for their office walls. 

Here you can see some gouache paintings, the first one is of climbing Clematis and the reference was from a photo I took when I was a teenager. The middle painting of a kingfisher is of a more stylised design. The duck painting I have hanging on a wall in my home. It was a labour of love painting the water as it was the first (and last) time I’ve attempted painting water and the reference was from a photo I took as a teenager and at the time I thought it was funny that it had a leaf on its back.