Painting for the brain

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

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

Vincent van Gogh made sunflowers his personal motifs, but, when he looked to experiment with colour, a full florist’s roster of irises, roses, poppies, poured out of his brush, as Michael Prodger discovers

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

This sunny landscape of oak trees in Chatsworth Park in Derbyshire is a wonderfully inspiring view, masses of Autumnal foliage back-lit by the warm sunshine. But how can we recreate that warmth with t

The word is enough to send shudders through many painters, and not just beginners. For me, an understanding of perspective was absolutely fundamental in allowing me to create an accurate drawing and p