"Tell deviantART about yourself" it says. hmmm....
well I don't know really. I mean how much do you want to know? I had toast for breakfast this morning. peanut butter too. That kinda thing? no? pfft... there's no pleasing some people.
ok... so how about the story of how I got into painting and sculpting then. That a bit better? Good.
I used to be a financial advisor many years ago (I know, different huh!), until my childhood epilepsy started acting up again. Eventually it got so bad that I had to give up my driving license, and had to stop work. This lasted for around 15 years. During this time I'd become SO bored that I decided to give oil painting a go as a hobby. Something to do. I couldn't stand watching daytime television for a single minute more!
I'd always been quite good at drawing and stuff in school, so I thought it might be fun to see if I could still do it. It turns out I could! Better than I realised. I started to get a few commissions here and there but not too many. It was enough to let me know that this was a genuine talent I had... and I became aware that it didn't affect my epilepsy in anyway! I could *control* how much work I did, and give my brain rests when it needed it.
This led to me setting up a website for my work and selling a few paintings through there, but it never really took off. Shortly after this though I had become interested in 1/6 collectable figures, and had bought myself one or two. I was frustrated though that whilst the figures themselves were good.. more often than not the faces weren't quite right. Never *really* looked like the actors they were portraying.
I could always *see* what was wrong with them (chin too big, nose too thin etc) and so I decided to have a go at resculpting and repainting one of them. I'd never done this before and to be honest thought I'd kill the figure!! But hey, it was something to do! Turns out I was good at that too!!
I put a few photos online of what I'd done, and I started getting messages from people asking me if I could do the same for their figures too! I'd never even considered that this was something that people would pay for. Over a year or two the orders increased and became more varied until today where I'm actually turning down commission requests because I'm too busy working off a 19 page waiting list that I have!!
I am now happily self employed (and finally OFF the Disability Benefit I was getting due to my inability to work because of the epilepsy) and I couldn't be happier!
Hopefully I'll be happily doing this until I'm 80 years old. (as long as my eyes still work ....and my fingers ......and my brain, I guess!)
Current Residence: in a house
Favourite genre of music: electronic or classical.... maybe
MP3 player of choice: iPod... OLD iPod (need a new one)