Fine Art Blog

Category: Animals

  • Artist Paul James – Where Urban Meets Farmyard!!!

    Paul James was born and raised in Leicestershire, where he grew up with a natural talent for art. Encouraged by his parents, he progressed artistically & with the advice of his school teachers, went on to art college to study graphic design. Paul did not complete his course & instead began to sell paintings of vintage cars and neighbours pets…more on his artistic journey in a later post!


    ‘Up The Swanee’
    limited edition on paper & canvas by Paul James

    You may be surprised to hear that Paul James is also a self-taught artist, as he is so incredibly talented you may not necessarily link those two statements! Paul is known for his very realistic, almost photgraphic looking paintings of animals and landscapes. His artworks have gained him a big following in both the UK and overseas such as the USA & Ireland to name but two and it is not hard to see why. His uncanny ability to paint animals in fascinating detail and capture amusing poses & expressions has endeared him to the public.


    ‘Dave’
    limited edition on paper & canvas by Paul James

    Paul has had the amazing success and honour of being published by not one, but several different publishing houses during his career, which just goes to show his continuing popularity and the first class art he is producing. His art takes a great deal of time to paint & we can see this in his great attention to detail, the subtle colours in the animal’s coats & the way you can see each separate animal hair in places!


    ‘Kred Gordon’
    limited edition on paper & canvas by Paul James

    A little known fact about Paul is that he is also a very talented musician and composer, he has even released a CD of his music, as well as performing for live audiences. Now that is what I call multi-talented! Although, it would not be hard to guess that Paul is an artist of many talents due to the versatility of his art, the fact that he can paint a serious picture of a landscape on the one hand and then a humorous animal the next.

    Paul was previously published by Washington Green Fine Art publishers. New For Winter 2010 Paul is now being published/distributed by Demontfort Fine Art publishers…again we will have more on this in a future post!

    Thank you

    Jessica

    Links:

    Heres some tips on how to paint animals

    Click here to view animal painting demonstrations

  • Elephants Parade London 2010 – Love Art, Love Elephants!

    Many of you may have ‘herd’ 🙂 about the Elephant parade that happened in London in June and July this year…


    Above: elephants painted by Peter Smith (left) and John Wilson (right)

    The Elephant Parade was the largest outdoor art exhibition ever staged in the UK, with 258 life sized baby elephant sculptures, set in locations all over London’s city centre. They were thought up and created for the leading wild elephant charity called ‘Elephant Family’ www.elephantfamily.org The interesting thing is that each elephant is a unique piece of art, hand painted by renowned artists and designers. The Parade ran for around two months; from May to July 2010. The elephants were placed in streets, parks and squares right across Central London at some of London’s leading landmarks.


    Above: elephants painted by Alexander Millar (left) and Jeff Rowland (right)

    With an estimated audience of 25 million (you cannot count every person in London who has viewed them can you?!), the campaign aimed to raise over £1 million for the endangered Asian elephant. It was a fresh and unique fundraising and awareness campaign that everyone could enjoy. Elephant Parade’s mission is to become the world’s largest financial support organisation for elephants, while attempting to save the Asian elephant from extinction in the wild.


    Above: elephants painted by Paul Kenton (left) and Louise Dear (right)

    Some of the UK’s finest artists and designers were sponsoring and painting an elephant including the previously blogged about: Alexander Millar, Jack Vettriano, Jeff Rowland John Wilson, Louise Dear, Paul Kenton & Peter Smith!…Many of these are artists licensed exclusively to Washington Green fine art publishers, so big thank you to them for allowing them to help out!

    After going on display in various locations all over London, a select number of elephants were then auctioned off by Sotheby’s, whilst the remainder were auctioned online.

    thank you

    Vicki

    Useful Links
    Elephant Parade Main site: www.elephantparadelondon.org
    Elephant Family Charity Main Site: www.elephantfamily.org
    Donate to Elephant Family: www.justgiving.com/elephantfamily/donate

  • Australian artist Rolf Harris – Can you tell that im turning 80 years old yet?

    Just released are these 2 new limited editions by Rolf Harris for Spring 2009 & with just over 2 months until Rolf Harris’s 80th birthday on March 30th 2010, these are sure to be very special pieces.


    ‘Into The Sun’ by Rolf Harris

    ‘Into The sun,’ is a stunning lioness face study & Rolf captures beautifully the features of this most majestic of animals; stalking her prey or about to start a chase? the viewer is left to decide!


    ‘Uluru Sunset’ By Rolf Harris

    ‘Uluru Sunset’ is the second piece. Uluru, also known worldwide as ‘Ayers Rock,’ is the world famous landmark in Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park. To view the sunset there is one of the most popular excursions in the whole of Australia. With the rich warm colours, Rolf captures perfectly the scene in his trademark style.

    As is usual now they are released as (1) an on paper version, which comes mounted/matted (with its borders) and will need to be glassed and framed or (2) an on canvas board edition: these are of a higher print quality & are as near a match to his original painting as possible, these are designed to not be framed but not glassed.


    Rolf with his wobble board

    Demand for these is huge, own a part of art history and be a part of Rolf Harris’ s 80th birthday year by owning these stunning pieces

    Thanks you

    James

    Links:
    Everchanging colours of Ayers Rock on video
    Living With Lions, lion conservation group
    Rolf Harris to do a song with Dizzee Rascal & the Chemical Brothers for his 80th Birthday!

  • Gary Hodges Artist – New Release for 2009 ‘Baby Love’ Hippos

    One of Britain’s best loved wildlife artists, Gary Hodges is back with a new release that has been very eagerly awaited.

    (‘Baby Love’ by Gary Hodges)

    Simply called ‘Baby Love,’ this latest release features a mother & baby hippo in the water and it has been beautifully captured by the artist.

    Gary tells us that it was inspired by his trip in 2007 to the Ngorongoro Crater game reserve in Tanzania and his observations of Hippopotamus.

    Undoubtedly Gary is one of the masters of Pencil/Graphite drawing, other great artists that spring to mind being David Shepherd, Mike Sibley & Peter Hildick whose artwork is both loved and collected by art lovers all over the world.

    (‘Family’ featuring Meerkats by Gary Hodges)

    I would say that over the last 20 years, Gary has been one of the consistently best selling artists in the UK, his older limited edition now sell for considerable amounts of money.

    ‘Baby Love’ is a valuable addition to Gary Hodges’s huge range of limited editions and is bound to sell out very quickly.

    Thank you

    James

    Useful links:
    http://ngorongorocrater.com/
    http://www.game-reserve.com/tanzania_ngorongoro.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus