Pet Portraits by Roger Burnay

I started art in my late teens and focused on drawing animals using a mapping pen and black ink. This involved drawing each hair/feather of the animal. The Guide Dogs for the Blind approached me to draw a design for their products but unfortunately my pen strokes were too fine for the printing process. On their suggestion I changed to a brush and learnt to paint, firstly in ink but also experimenting with oils and watercolours along the way. I kept returning to pen and wash mainly due to the length of time oils took to dry and the smell would hang around for ages.

In the following years, a combination of getting married, raising a family and the pressures of developing a career resulted in painting taking a back seat, although I still dabbled from time to time. Photography helped me to keep an interest in composition and style.

It was really only after my wife bought me a fantastic set of watercolours and her pressing me to use them that I started to get back to a hobby that I had thoroughly enjoyed previously. Since then many of my paintings have appeared in local Galleries and have sold many at different Exhibitions such as the Maritime Festival in Great Yarmouth, Great Yarmouth Guild of Artists Exhibition , Royal Norfolk Show and others in and around Norfolk.

 

Following my success I decided to improve my art and took two courses at the London Art College, one in watercolours, a medium I use for the many seascapes I have done and the other in pet portraits which is my absolute forte. I think that one of the main benefits of the course, apart from the excellent guidance and direction of the tutor, Melanie Phillips, was that the course encouraged use of all mediums whether oil, pastel, acrylic, coloured pencil or graphite each with their own unique properties. The course opened up a whole new world artistically speaking for me and as a result my work goes from strength to strength..

         The Artist