Living for the city

I STRUGGLED INTO MY LAYERS, picked up my light sketching kit and off I went up into the hills behind where I live. I wasn’t the first to arrive; halfway up the hill I could already hear the cries of e

Every painting’s varying subject matter and scale offers us distinct opportunities and challenges. Before I start any project, I like to consider what I want to convey, what opportunities and challeng

My life in the cheese world stemmed from a geeky fascination with microbial life and how those living microbes can change a food product. I started painting through a fascination with soil microbiolog

SOMETIMES MAKING LIFE SIMPLER FOR YOURSELF and avoiding overthinking a process gets you further. In painting terms, using flat colours does exactly that and it may even prove to hold the key to more c

Old buildings tumbling into decay have always fascinated me as a painting subject, and adding that time-worn, tatty appearance can infuse your work with an extra dimension that will increase its appea

Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge