To start with I was always hand drawing anything and everything because it is so important.  Can drawing help you sleep?  It certainly relaxes you and calms you down so I would say it does.  So the first medium of me has got to be a range of pencils of various thicknesses to shade with and charcoal has a very interesting quality to it as well.  I especially enjoy drawing people and figure compositions especially if I am in a local pub.  Then I follow this up with a series of photographs.  It is important to get the drawing right and keep practicing until you get it right.

I am always influenced by the Impressionists style of painting and the way they have used colour.  Impressionists do paint using light in their work.  I was always an oil painter and still love the smell of the turps and linseed oil.  However, recently I have found acrylic to be a superb medium because It dries quickly, has a range of bright colours and is water-based.  I try to sketch from life wherever possible but in the case of crowd scenes, this is not always possible.  So I use photographs of the or sometimes a scene and then put people into it.  It is usually a challenge for me to paint a lot of people in a crowd but because I love people in a scene it is exciting.  I also try to paint an interesting scene where the eye is lead into the picture, for instance diagonally or in a sort of shape.  I sometimes use a palette knife especially in the cases of skies and when I am painting textures i.e. trees and also I will use sponges or other things to create textures.  Textures are great!  When I look at the scene I try to remember what it was really like but remember the Impressionist technique of using complementary colours and try to capture light.

I have also enjoyed using pastels because they are so easy to use, although messy (I don't mind getting messy!).  When to use pastels?  Usually on a tinted paper, which come in different colours.  I usually use a darker background and whatever subject I am drawing I try to create a whole picture rather than the subject in isolation.  For instance in the case of a vase of flowers on a table, I paint the flowers, table and what or who is around the table at the time.  As well as this I have tried to be experimental by using encaustic techniques using crayons and an iron (its really great fun and fast!) and like scraperboard.  At the moment I have not got any photographs of these but watch this space.  I like to use a variety of mediums in the same picture as well e.g. collage, pastel and paint.