UPDATE July 2008: This website is no longer current. Please visit my updated Animal Fine Art and Photography website at http://michellewrighton.com
About me... I am a self taught artist and have been drawing since I could hold a pencil - I have always been compelled to draw the animals that I love and I guess it was a natural progression to offer my services as an animal artist to those wishing to commission a unique work of art to commemorate their cherished pets. Animals are so important in our lives, and I find it incredibly rewarding to be able to capture their personality and character to create a fitting tribute that will be enjoyed for a lifetime. I work from my home studio, surrounded by the natural beauty of the Darling Ranges on the outskirts of the Perth, Western Australia. I live with my husband, three children and the 'fur-kids', Tia our beautiful Chinese Shar-Pei, our two cats Tara and Gandalf, plus an assortment of tropical and African Cichlid fish, not to mention the kangaroos, possums, bob-tails, quenda's, magpies, kookaburra's and eagles that regularly grace us with their presence. I honestly couldn't imagine life without being surrounded by animals! In my younger days (before children:) I had my own horses and competed in Pony Club and a few One Day Events, then I spent several years showing my Jack Russell Terriers and bred several litters under the 'Terrajac" prefix before deciding that parting with puppies was just too difficult emotionally (unfortunately you just can't keep them all!). For the past nine years, my husband and I have also promoted responsible dog ownership and responsible dog breeding through our website Dogsites (www.dogsites.com.au). About my art... The artwork that I create is very realistic while retaining a definite hand drawn appearance. I do not aim for photo-realism in my work, but what I personally refer to as 'artistic realism' - the artwork that I create is my artistic interpretation of the subject rather than just a copy of a photograph. My graphite and colour work are slightly different, as I use different techniques for the different mediums. Graphite is such a beautiful medium to work with as it allows so much detail and tremendous depth and emotion to be expressed simply through the subtle variations of tone. I love the timeless elegance of black and white! I feel that I have more artistic freedom when I work in colour, so my colour portraits, while still being very realistic and life-like, have a slightly more 'artistic' appearance than my graphite work. I love playing with colour, and tend to use lots of different and sometimes unexpected colours to bring a portrait to life. That is probably why I love colour pencils so much, as they are a translucent medium that requires numerous light layers (20 or more) of lots of colours to achieve the desired effect. I have a very 'painterly' style - that is my colour pencil works look like paintings rather than drawings, with the pigment completely covering the tooth of the paper. The down side to using colour pencils with this style is that they are extremely time consuming, a 11 x 14" piece in pure colour pencil will take me more than 40 hours to complete! This is why I incorporate pastels in my work as the underpainting layer, plus the added benefit is that the finished artwork is not as fragile as a pure pastel piece and does not require special framing techniques. More recently I have started working with purely in pastels on artist quality velour paper, which I have found to be an incredible combination for creating the softness of animal fur, and I have also develded into painting on canvas in acrylics so that I can create larger artwork with natural background settings. You've done well to read this far - this is probably more than you really wanted to know about me! Cheers Michelle
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