ARTWORK
My lifelong passion is artwork. I've been an artist for as long as I can remember, and it is a big advantage when it comes to creativity. This is just a selection of the artwork I've done over the years. I got into the habit of doing drawings whenever I was on holiday but have not done so for some time.
I did these drawings when I was in the Lake District at Easter in 2011. Despite my love for the coast, the lakes have always been my favourite British holiday destination, and I was certainly conscious about the scenery when creating the world of Family in a Tree. The region was formed by glaciation during the ice age very much like New Zealand, and the hilltops are not always visible for the clouds.
The Titanic, as everyone knows, was an ocean liner which sank in 1912 after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Being the largest ship ever built at the time, the fate of the huge vessel was the most notorious maritime disaster in history. This is a picture I’ve drawn of the ship in a bottle with an ice cube, reminiscent of bottled sailing ships.
I focused greatly on my artwork when I was at school, and did this drawing just before I started Year 10. There was not much explanation as to what was going through my head at the time, I simply envisioned a ghostly, underground roller-coaster in a moment of imagination.
Although I mostly work with pens and pencils, I have painted every now and then. In more recent years, I did this painting, a wallpaper design for a music room. If you look, you'll see that the vases in which the flames, candles, harps and treble clefs stand form a continuous pattern.
The latest piece of holiday artwork I’ve done is this one, when I visited the Jurassic Coast during Easter of 2014. The Jurassic Coast is Britain’s most famous fossil site, as it contains an entire ecosystem of primeval life. I suddenly went off my potential for holiday artwork after that, probably because I had my writing to think about, and a change of scenery can provide a large, refreshing opportunity for one’s creative state of mind.