Art for beginners by a beginner

I don't consider myself to be an artist but I enjoy painting and wish to inspire others to have a go. Read "Starting out with Watercolours" for a fuller explanation of what this site is about but basically I like to think of it as a site for beginners by a beginner.

I've tried to provide a narrative to each picture and, where I can, attempt to explain some of my mistakes. My objective is to try and demonstrate that we don't have to be future 'Constables' in order to enjoy what we do. In art terms, my work is quite poor ... but that doesn't stop me enjoying it.

Watercolours

This is where it all started. I have organised my work into a number of Galleries. My first paintings created as I followed the lessons in Frank Clarke's book "PaintBox", later paintings that I did on my own, and then other media as I continued to explore my capabilities and what I enjoyed. As I've already mentioned, my page "Starting out with Watercolours" will give you a much better idea of what this site is about

Pencil Drawings

When taking my first inexperienced steps into the world of Watercolours, I was of the opinion that what gave a picture any sense of reality was colour ... green blobs are trees, blue area's at the top must be sky, and the grey stuff is probably stone. Take away the colour and the resulting image would be just a boring, flat image.

Wanting to understand how much of the pleasure in my paintings came from the medium of watercolours, and how much from the ability to create the right sort of shapes on the paper, I decided to experiment with Pencil. I was very surprised with the result and have found the use of a couple of simple pencils much more rewarding than the most wonderful array of tubes of paint.

My web pages are all about encouraging people to 'have a go' and see for themselves how enjoyable it is to create a picture. In that same vein I encourage anyone who has tried watercolours but ventured no further, to try their hand at pencil. I wager, like me, you will be surprised at what you can achieve.

My Disasters

Many artists would probably not want to show you the stuff they got wrong, but I don't consider myself to be an artist. I encourage beginners to look at my mistakes, not because I'm proud of them, but because I want to demonstrate that even the worst of our efforts can be a positive achievement if we adopt the right attitude.