Brian Smith - Fine Art & Design - Artist Sheffield

Corporate Caricaturing for B and Q - In December, I spent a great evening caricaturing at the B and Q Sheffield Christmas bash. They were a spirited lot, as befitted the occasion, and as my services were funded by the company, any employee who fancied it could sit for a free caricature. There were plenty of takers!

Painting holiday, France - September marked a return visit to the wonderful chateau at Oigny-en Valoir in Picardie, tutoring an enlarged group of artists this year. The weather was kind, allowing us plenty of painting “en plein- air”, including at Pierrefond , which boasts the fairytale castle used in the shooting of the “Merlin” television series – a superb subject. I was delighted to see that most of the group were up for the challenge of painting in public and the results made it worthwhile.

Newsletter - The end of 2009 brought with it several opportunities for painting in the great outdoors.

Amongst other exercises, I led a tutorial around painting the house of the “guardienne” of the Oigny chateau and managed to get down this painting of my own in the process. An impression of the Chateau is in the background

My wife Irene and I preceded the chateau trip with a visit to Paris, arriving just in time to walk up to Montmartre, to have dinner and watch the world (or at least the world of portrait artists) go by. The following day I gathered information in photographs and site sketches, as the basis for a series of paintings to be completed in 2010, the first of which is shown here. A very busy road junction by the Seine, at Place St Michel, caught my eye, which was being controlled by a lonely female officer - it makes a terrific composition!

Exhibition at Abbeydale Hamlet Over a surprisingly mild weekend in October, I joined members of my Thursday morning art class in an exhibition of their work at the Industrial Hamlet. The group are by no means strangers to the venue – we have visited it a number of times because of the terrific range of subjects it offers for outdoor painting. The weekend coincided with a marvellous “Steam Gathering”, involving rollers and other steam-driven vehicles, and many of the group showed paintings of great quality of the Hamlet buildings and of steam engines too! I took the opportunity on the Sunday of joining the crowds of visitors to capture the atmosphere in watercolour, working against the clock before the wonderful light disappeared.

Spectacularly successful was a series of murals which were completed by visiting children over the Hamlet weekend, under the guidance of my art group members, working on line drawings I had mapped out beforehand, featuring the various processes and lifestyles for which the Hamlet is rightly famous. All the research, preparation and hard work paid off and visitors to the site can see the stunning murals for themselves, as they will form a standing exhibition, and hopefully a valuable education aid, at the Hamlet for some time to come.

Art in the Gardens, Sheffield - I didn’t take a stand at this annual outdoor event but I thought it might provide an opportunity for a painting of the colourful stalls; and so it proved. Despite the overcast weather, I managed to dash off this quick painting which I think captures the atmosphere of the day.

Rotherham Commission - The paint has just dried on two watercolours I was commissioned to paint for a Rotherham client who wanted some familiar images around him. One of them, this rendering of Bridgegate, was completed after a couple of visits to the town with my camera. I am always keen to juxtapose the old with the new where this is agreeable to the client and this was no exception.