New Year Offer

Hello everyone, hope your have a fabulous new year with your friends and family.

This offer only stands for january 2014 only, although if people like trying-before-buying I very likely to repeat this experience. So let me know.

First a few guidelines.

-You have the whole of january to post your photos.

-It can be any animal that your own.

-Only one animal per canvas.

-You can put up as many photos as you like.

-You can choose the style you prefer : either "multiple-miniature" or "large-singular" and can request a colour or you can leave it as a surprise.

-I will photograph any resulting paintings as soon as possible after they are finished.

-I will not alert you if your beloved pet as been chosen, you need to keep checking back on my Facebook page.

-If you like idea but are not able to photograph your pet for any reason let me know so I can alert your personally if I repeat this offer later on in the year.

I think that's about it, if you have any further questions just ask.



Price and Canvas size reminders



Large Singular Portraits - £200

Medium Singular Portraits - £150

Small Singular Portraits - £100

10cm Miniature Portrait - £20


15cm Miniature Portrait - £25


20cm Miniature Portrait - £30

You can request real colour on these smaller portraits - but there will be an extra 50% charge on their original prices.



Hope that explained the offer very throughly, any questions or objections please don't hesitate to ask.

Online galleries?

At university on Tuesday we had a really interesting talk by the fabulously named founder of Visual Art Trader Chris Grant Peterkin (I'll pop the link at the bottom of this post for those interested).

He was talking about how everything is moving into more internet friendly ways - including the gallery and the buying/selling of artwork. He gave examples of these exchanges and interactions between real-life galleries/art fairs and online ones. As well as proof that people view art online before buying it or going to see it in its gallery setting because their busy lifestyles stop them going to physically visit galleries and browsing for art.

Basically it really inspired me to take better photographs of my artwork to let people - myself included - avoid the intimidating and sometimes plain complicated world of galleries for a while longer.

Not forever.

Just until I know for certain that someone other than myself likes my work.

So I'm going to sign up for it - it's only £24 a year for a student account or £48 for a standard one. They also don't take commission which is obviously really good.

The site offers a kind of categorisation of art style there are only four of them - abstract, representational, semi-abstract and semi-representational. This is good for the practical reason that general, casual art buyers generally want something for their home/office and they want it to be something they like - be it a big and bright horse painting (see links to my website if interested) or a big smudge of paint that matches their curtains but also starts to look like a landscape if looked at for long enough.

Taste sure isn't simple - but knowing that galleries are scary to buy from compared to Internet shopping sure is.

Anyway waffle over - Internet shopping is the future, so I'm going to brush up on photography skills and show off a little.

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Visual Art Trader Website

How to take a Photo in Preparation for a Commision

Thought I'd pop this page into my blog to direct people on how to take a good photograph for my paintings or sketches, using my own little gaggle of pets.

Tip 1)Use Natural light. Theres nothing worse than a flash making them over shiney, losing detail.

Tip 2)Get down to their height rather than taking the photo from above them.

Compared with...

Tip 3)Ears Forward.(not my horse, he just always tries to eat my camera)

Compared with...

Tip 4)An open mouth on dogs gives them a cute smile.

Tip 5)And if your animal is too wriggly and will not let you take a photo, a sleeping animal is just as cute as an awake one.