Newsletter

Against a background of my “orthodox” teaching and commission work, the final quarter of 2008 brought in some fascinating projects, each one a different challenge.

A visit to Paris at the end of September meant inspirational tours of the Louvre and the magnificent Musee d’Orsay, and provided lots of material for further work. I followed it up with a weeks tutoring at a fairy-tale chateau at Villers Coteretes, about an hour by train east of Paris, where thirteen people painted and sketched their way around all that the chateau and its environs had to offer. We provided our own cuisine and evening entertainment (They were a talented lot - with all manner of musical diversions both modern and traditional) and hopefully we shall have it all to do again in 2009.
	I was delighted to be asked in November to put together a watercolour illustration for the benefit of HRH Prince Charles. During an official visit to Sheffield, his Highness was shown the site of a major landscaping programme; part of a multi-million pound regeneration scheme designed to provide a countryside amenity in the heart of the city’s industrial east end. The watercolour which was prepared from landscape architects design drawings, showed the Prince how the site will look when it’s completed.
November also brought a project with artist’s materials suppliers Colourfull Arts, who have put together two Art Materials Education Packages aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students. The challenge here, after agreeing the mix of materials, was to put together a set of accompanying notes and illustrations for each pack, to explain the working properties of the materials and hopefully some exciting examples of their uses. I relished the design element in this—materials included acrylics, graphite sticks, torchon, watercolours and aquarelle crayons – so the options were pretty extensive.
	Add to these a commission to produce a replica in acrylic on canvas of a New York subway-train roll sign (I didn’t know what that was either) and a great opportunity to produce a mural for my newly re-vamped local curry house, and all-in-all the wind up to 2008 was a real cracker.