About

For the last two decades I’ve worked in the film industry, most recently exclusively as a producer and line producer, while spending the early part of my career moonlighting as an entertainment reporter and field producer for a number of outlets, including HeyUGuys, DenOfGeek, Getty, and Hello.

A screenshot from an interview I carried out with Miss Piggy

I’ve loved and appreciated art throughout my life, but between some bad advice from an art teacher at the age of 16, and increasing time pressures as I came into early adulthood, I stopped actually making art when I was in my late teens. I made a few attempts to get back into it over the years, but my skills never matched my ambition and I became frustrated and gave up.

That changed in the spring of 2019. During some downtime between filming projects, and with encouragement from a dear friend – who is a talented portrait artist –  I picked up a copy of Fun With a Pencil by Andrew Loomis,  and began working through it teaching myself to draw again from scratch.

A series of movement studies I carried out as I was learning to draw again

I made drawing and study a part of my daily routine, forcing myself to spend at least an hour each day working at it. It took me several months to get back to the level I was at when I’d abandoned art in my teens, but slowly I began to exceed that level.

Then the pandemic hit, and my production career stalled out. Due to health concerns I was shielding, and unable to work on set – which is a pretty difficult position to be in as a producer – so I turned to art commissions to pay my bills.

Although I’ve been able to restart that film career since the end of the pandemic, I’ve continued to earn a part of my living through art since, and kept up the art practice and study, teaching myself to work across a range of styles and media – from traditional watercolour portrait painting, to working digitally, and creating technical illustrations in vector art software.

A triptych of three self portraits using the same refence across three different media: pencil, digital painting, and ink pen & alcohol marker,

Over the last few years, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have become increasingly hostile to artists – deprioritising posts that link to outside sites, and anything that looks like its trying to sell products – unless you pay them a sizeable fee every month for advertising.

Similarly, sales platforms like Etsy, Redbubble and Numonday take enormous fees – charging customers exorbitant rates for sub-standard products, while paying a tiny fraction of that fee to artists.

Which is why I’m pivoting to posting on, and selling through, a site I own. If you want to stay updated on what I’m working on, sign up to my mailing list, subscribe to my RSS feed, or follow me on Bluesky.

And to give you even more incentive to do so, I can promise more than just art. I’ll be using this site to publish essays on art, entertainment and culture, as well as works of fiction that until now have sat on my hard drive gathering digital dust,

And if you feel like it, and want to support your friendly neighbourhood illustrator, feel free to buy a print or printable, commission a unique piece for yourself or a loved one, or just leave me a tip.