“I started my working life as a secondary school teacher, but later moved to work for Rolls Royce plc as one of their Design Engineers, achieving the status of Associate Engineering Fellow, retiring in 2014.  Up until I took a short course in art in ~2015 I had dabbled a bit in drawing, mainly with animals and birds, and generally using ink pens, but this included breaks of several years between each spurt.  I went to art classes initially to improve my creation of backgrounds for my subjects, but found that there was a lot more to art than pen drawings of animals, and now I have a greater all-round knowledge; far from a complete knowledge, and cannot always achieve my aims, but still enjoy trying and learning.  Nowadays I mainly create portraits of people, but am now confident to work on pictures of buildings and landscapes as well.  As an engineer I lack some degree of creativity, but still want to continue to compare notes with other artists and try to find my signature style. My main motivation is in creating things.  This includes tools for the home and garden, models and paintings, and hopefully I will continue to improve, at least to a small degree.”