About Me (Brief Bio'.)
As a kid I always loved drawing and painting and after leaving school started a two year art foundation college course which i ended up leaving at the end of the first year after getting no direction and becoming disillusioned with it all. After that I got a job as a junior in a west end of London creative services studio and from there over the years evolved into a freelance ’jack of all trades' ad' agency studio artist involved in design, typography, creative artwork, lettering, general illustration and eventually visualising and storyboarding. While also for a number of years doing freelance design and cartoons for a major greetings card company. I got hooked on ‘figurative’ when i later began studying life drawing and anatomy to improve on my overall drawing and storyboarding abilities, and for the first time in years found a subject that inspired me to start drawing and painting again for myself at home which became and still is an ongoing part time passion. |
About my work
For me it's simply about studying and exploring the structure, movement, mood and sensuality of the figure from my own perspective via simple sketches through to large colour artworks, and semi realism through to abstract. I work from life, my head, my own photography or any interesting images I find in the media. I think from the conditioning of years of working in the ad' industry where everything was always wanted in a rush, I don't have the patience nor like the predictable end result of spending time planning or labouring over a picture, so I tend to be spontaneous and just do what I feel at the time, generally working fast loosely and fluidly with freedom of technical constraints and often doing many variations of a particular pose or theme with figures generally set in non descript open to interpretation abstract backgrounds. My work is predominately in ink and/or charcoal along with mixed mediums of oil, acrylic, gouache and pastels on various weight white, warm coloured or hand colour washed papers that vary in size from approx' A2 up to A1+. If at all interested in, or would like more information regarding any of my work, or would simply like to get in touch for any reason at all, please don't hesitate to do so at any time via the contact page that will forward your message to my prime email account and i'll get back to you A.S.A.P. (If getting in touch regarding a particular picture, please also quote it's reference number that appears at the beginning of the picture details text when viewing it enlarged via the gallery pages.) Thanks Keith Valentine Links: My online illustration portfolio: http://www.keithvalentine.co.uk Artists directory: http://www.artistsdirectory.co.uk |