July/August 2005

I was born and raised in Lancashire, England, until marriage to a Yorkshire man resulted in relocation to that county.

I have had no formal art training, through school, college and university I studied the science based subjects and eventually gained a BSc. (Honours) in Zoology in 1981. I do however remember a lot of doodles round the sides of my pages.

My childhood love of animals continued and I bought my first Rough Collie, fell in love with the breed and founded the Glenspey Rough Collies. I now show, judge, and occasionally breed a litter.

The doodles continued, and I had a brief unsuccessfully acquaintance with watercolours. Then around six years ago I saw an artist using pastel pencils to draw a dog portrait and I was hooked. I bought the pencils and went home to practice. Over the next couple of years I practiced, added soft pastels to my paintings and did some commission work, but I always struggled to create the detail I wanted to achieve. I did some pure graphite pieces, which gave me the detail but left me longing for some colour.

Then I saw and joined the UKCPS, marveled at the work that could be done with coloured pencils and bought a set of 72 Prismacolors. I had found my ideal medium. I had the control; the colour, and I could add as much detail as I wanted.

At that stage I was drawing mainly the big cats, so my first coloured pencil piece was a lion. I enjoyed every pencil stroke, even though it was a big piece and took me months to complete.

I was finding it increasingly difficult to obtain reference material that was available to use and appealed to me, as my only access to African wildlife was that found in Zoo’s and Wildlife Park. Wherever possible I like to use my own photographs having actually seen the animal for myself.

Watching my dogs playing one day, I realized I had an endless source of material, literally round my feet. From then on I specialized in dogs and cats, starting with a simple portrait of Cody, one of my Collies.

I often do ‘up close and personal’ dog and cat portraits as I find coloured pencil to be the ideal medium. On the one hand I can produce the glassy look of a cats eye, on the other I can get the detail and endless colours of fur patterns.

Eighteen months ago my art took another leap forward when I discovered the online art forums and saw the coloured pencil work of artists from other countries, once again my jaw hit the floor and I was inspired to try different things. The help and advice received from artists spread across the world has made an amazing difference to my work in trying to reach the next level.

I sometimes work in mixed media and will add a soft pastel background to a coloured pencil animal portrait, ‘Grounded’, my Bullmastiff portrait is an example, or I will add acrylic for highlights, whiskers etc. My latest venture was to work in coloured pencil, oil pastel and soft pastel, to produce a portrait of Juno, one of the pups I kept from my last litter, and this painting was ‘Shades of Gold’. I will however always return to pure coloured pencil after my sideways experiments, I am well and truly hooked.

My aim is to eventually portray dogs and cats in a setting that tells a story of a moment in their life rather than pure portraits, but I have a lot more practicing, learning and simply dreaming until I get there. However, every step of this particular journey with coloured pencils though it might contain many disappointments is filled with discovery and therefore will never be dull.

Thank you Gemma for this invitation to share my work and also for being an inspiration to me with your own artwork.

click image to enlarge

"Eye Spy"

"Rottweiler"

" The Lookout"

"Grounded"

"Proud One"

Visit the Artist of the Month's Website at

Gayle's Website

Email: Gayle

Web Site Owned & Designed by