Artists have used endless tricks and tools to help them capture the image they were after, from lightboxes and lenses, grids and viewfinders, cameras, computers and more recently Photoshop. Many people use photographs as a convenient basis for their paintings. It obviously seems easier to sit and copy a static scene instead of battling the various problems of perspective, three dimensional space, colour, changing light and moving subjects.

A word of caution though; cameras only have one ‘eye’ and can madly distort images, especially when zoom lenses are used. We find it hard to believe that photographs can lie to us so badly, and we don’t even notice the crazy distortions on many photos of moving people. Yet people faithfully copy, even trace, photos of dancers or sportspeople and can’t work out why the figures look so odd.

It seems like a simple solution, but it can be a very deceptive one. The single lens of the camera squashes perspective onto one plane, especially if the figure is moving. This distorts and flattens everything, so that a closer object becomes smaller and a more distant one becomes bigger. As an example look at this photo..

Using a photo is different from letting a photo use you. A slavish copy of a flat image is exactly that; it takes human aliveness and consciousness to turn it into a work of art. Photographs can be useful aids but we have to be aware of their distortions or we will just copy them blindly. As artists, we have to infuse our work with all our skills of interpretation and insight to give it the kiss of life.  

I do use photographs sometimes. I take photos when there isn't time to paint, and occasionally I capture something that looks like an interesting starting point. For example.....

 “Machines can do many things better than people, but beauty created by a combination of hand, eye, personality and material is something we shall always need. In fact, there is a sense of presence which can only be created by an artist or craftsman”                                           Martin Gayford

I am starting my classes again after the long hot summer! 
On Friday 19th September mornings I will be returning to the lovely gardens of Villa Bologna to resume the outdoor classes there.
From 20th September the Saturday Morning Drawing Club will get underway again in my studio in Manikata.


For more details please click HERE and contact me if you need any more information at all.


I will also be teaching an exciting six week course for teenagers 12 - 14 beginning in October in Sliema. I'll be showing them how to draw from real people, helping them to sketch quickly and for the last class we'll be working at the rehearsals of a Flamenco performance.


Looking forward to seeing you soon!!

I wonder if perhaps because mark-making is such a primal human urge we expect drawing to be ‘easy’ somehow; that it should not demand practice or hard work. Most people really wish that they could draw, but are convinced that they are not ‘gifted’ because they were probably told as children that their attempts at drawing were not good enough (good enough for WHAT? They are expressions, not competitions). Children who find drawing easy seem to be those who naturally see abstract shapes and how they fit together in space. It is more a gift of perception or observation than of drawing, really.

 “Drawing will make you a better person – not morally, necessarily, but it makes you think. It will help you see the hidden patterns all around you, and make you a discriminating lover of landscapes, faces and mundane objects. It becomes an education, which changes your brain as much as learning to play the piano or to dance. It is about striving to become more fully human”  Andrew Marr in ‘A Short Book About Drawing’

You can use the practice of drawing as a form of productive meditation, time for yourself, an interesting way of looking at the world differently and an absorbing search for lines and shapes to describe what you see. It can also be a new way of connecting to your surroundings, helping you to see things that you had never noticed before. The end result is less important than how much you learn, how much you see and how deeply you become absorbed. This alone can be the greatest source of joy, and as you continue the actual drawings will improve, with flashes of insight and leaps of ability.

I often think that the world would be a much more peaceful and pleasant place if only everyone was helped to draw to the best of their ability; we would all ‘see’, feel and experience life in a much less superficial way.

For the last 20 years I have worked as an artist in Malta. I have exhibited my work regularly, and taught drawing and watercolour in Malta for around 20 years. I tutored painting holidays with Malta Art for about 8 years. I have represented Malta in many countries abroad. But I have only really worked within the Maltese art scene.

I have often gravitated towards other ‘foreign’ artists, perhaps because of their differing methods, artistic education and approaches to their work. I have learnt a lot from working alongside them. I’ve been inspired to try new things, and I hope that I inspired them too. Creativity is reciprocal and inclusive – it cannot grow in a vacuum.

It’s only recently that I have realised how very differently the art worlds operate in Malta and abroad.

I have often gravitated towards other ‘foreign’ artists, perhaps because of their differing methods, artistic education and approaches to their work. I have learnt a lot from working alongside them. I’ve been inspired to try new things, and I hope that I inspired them too. Creativity is reciprocal and inclusive – it cannot grow in a vacuum.

It’s only recently that I have realised how very differently the art worlds operate in Malta and abroad.

A common Maltese attitude was epitomised to me once when someone said ‘why do you teach? You are showing people how to take your work away from you!’ That was many years ago and attitudes have changed somewhat with the advent of the internet. Malta is a very small country though, with limited resources and opportunities. The jealous defence of ‘secrets’ continues in some areas.

This does not make much sense in creative spheres. Unless you are a very talented forger, you cannot paint another person’s paintings. And why would you want to? Forging Picassos or Van Goghs may be financially rewarding until you get caught, but copying anything less famous is hardly worthwhile if you want to exhibit and sell it. It also illegal. As a learning exercise this is a time-honoured way of experiencing different techniques and working methods. As long as the results are titled ‘After*******’ it is quite acceptable. But otherwise?

Creativity cannot be tied down or controlled. The best way to keep it alive is to share it. Like lighting candles from one another, the brilliance of inspiration comes from passing on the flames. Each one is slightly different and unique, but each one contributes to the whole. Once we have learnt the basic techniques and know how to control our medium, then our creative adventures can begin. We can borrow and share ideas, giving them our own individual stamp and pass them on. 

There is yet another use for your pencil that I haven’t mentioned yet; measuring. That’s the OTHER thing that artists are doing when they hold a pencil out and squint past it. It’s yet another useful and simple skill that makes all the difference to your drawings and also helps to override your left brain....... 

Find two identical things – cups perhaps. Put them on a table in front of you with one about 20 cms further away from you than the other. It’s easier if they are directly on your eyeline, so maybe sit down to do this exercise. Hold up your pencil at arm’s length in front of you and close one eye. Hold the top of the pencil so that, in space, it is in line with the top of the nearest cup. Slide your thumb so that it is in line with the bottom of the cup. You now have a measurement of the cup. Move your pencil and compare this with the second cup. It is probably half the size!
This is quite a revelation to your left brain, which knows that the cups are the same size, and will refuse to ‘see’ that one now appears smaller. Unless you prove it wrong, you will tend to draw the cups the same size.

You can either stick to the exact same size, making marks on your paper and joining them dot-to-dot, ( called ‘sight-size’) or you can reduce or increase the first mark you make on your paper and then keep everything to the same ratio. So a cup may be half as wide as its height, no matter how big or small you draw it.

The more you practise measuring the less you actually have to do it; in time you will begin to make accurate calculations, and your left brain will leave you alone to go and do what it does best - writing lists and planning what to have for dinner!

This can get a little tricky, holding things still, squinting and then transferring the angle to your paper without your sneaky left brain jumping in to distort everything, so I give my students a ‘gadget’ to help.....

You hold the longer edge either horizontally or vertically, which corresponds to your paper’s edges, and then move the shorter arm until it matches the angle you want to draw. Hoorah!

This doesn’t look quite as mystical and professional as squinting and waving your pencil around of course, but it works!

After practising with the pencil, viewfinder and the gadget for some time, you will find that you can estimate perspective lines quite accurately and just use these techniques as back up. Perspective is an optical illusion; we really don’t need to go into the mechanical workings of why and how it works. It is much simpler to just draw what we see in front of us, exactly as it appears to be. Don’t process it, don’t ask questions, don’t say ‘well it CAN’T look like that!’ – it does, so draw it!! 

Simple  :-)

I will be Artist in Residence at Villa Bologna for the month of April, plus my First Friday Gallery on the 4th April - and I am also preparing for an exhibition of paintings in Mellieha in May. I’m taking names for the Saturday Morning Drawing Club too, which starts on the 5th April.......     phew!
Contact me !

I am a Flat-Earther when it comes to drawing....   we have to draw on two dimensional surfaces so how can anything really be three dimensional in our drawings? Drawing itself is an illusion; there are no lines around things, only changes in colour or tone or distance, so we have to invent marks to show those changes. We capture optical illusions in our lines; objects don’t really become smaller as they move away from us, they only appear to.

This makes no sense to our beleaguered ‘left brains’ which will battle heroically to make things look the way they ‘should’. Struggling with perspective for hours and not knowing why the results still look so wrong is every student’s nightmare. Being shown how to construct disappearing perspective lines which meet on the horizon/eyeline makes the left brain happy, but it’s often hard to apply this accurately when faced with a real life, three dimensional subject. Lines tend to tilt in the completely opposite direction, we invent things we can’t see at all, and it just gets totally frustrating. 







There is a much easier way; drawing three-dimensional space so that it appears ‘real’ is almost simple if you tell yourself that the world is flat. You have to prove this first, so that your left brain will give up trying to ‘help’ you.

Hold up a piece of string with a weight on the end of it – a plumbline – so that you can see past it to, say, a cup on a table beyond it. Close one eye and see that the cup ‘touches’ the string in space. Now close the other eye instead and see how much the cup appears to have moved! We humans have brilliant binocular vision with our two eyes, which gives us our sense of depth and distance. In this case though, we need one view, so close one eye and see the cup ‘touching’ the string. Now look down the string a little and see that the closest edge of the table ‘touches’ the string too, look down further and you will see the floor, the table legs perhaps – all ‘touching’ the string. Look up the string and you will see the further edge of the table and whatever else is in your view – a window perhaps, the view outside, miles down the road, all will ‘touch’ the string too! 

This gives you not only a very useful tool to judge perspective with – it also gives you the greatest gift of all – you now LOOK LIKE AN ARTIST.

Do this with enough conviction (you don’t actually need to draw anything at all) and everyone will think you know exactly what you are doing. Result!