 Perhaps a simple painting of a budgerigar, done whilst at infant school, was the big moment in my life as an artist. I have only vague recollections of what the picture looked like, but there are clearer memories of being led around the school proudly showing off this picture to children in other classrooms.
As an eleven year-old, and with further encouragement from a teacher, my first major Art Exhibition was hung along the school corridor. Among the exhibits were drawings of a tiger, Samson, a caveman and Charles Dickens!
My father worked as a slitting machine operator in a packaging factory and regularly brought home a variety of ‘waste' paper, a reel end of which I still have. This abundance and availability of drawing paper in the house, together with lots of early encouragement, seems to have been key to my artistic development.
At age thirteen, my mum and dad bought me a set of oil paints and a sketching easel - which I still have, and continue to use some thirty five years later.
Around the age of fifteen, I went on Saturdays and during school holidays to work for a Master Sign Writer, whose wife ran the Art Shop next door - bonus! Over the next couple of years, I learnt one-stroke lettering, sign writing and silk screen printing. My reward was learning new skills, having regular critiques and, every now and again, receiving gifts of art materials from the shop.
By age sixteen, I started to visit Zoos to draw the animals. Chester Zoo kindly allowed me free access to sketch and study their cats and other large animals.
I went on to Manchester Polytechnic where I completed a one year foundation course in Art and Design, followed by a three year degree course in Illustration
Dave Painting on Mount Mansfield, Vermont
On leaving with a BA First Class Honours Degree in 1982, I was launched, unprepared, into finding work around London as a freelance illustrator. Children's educational books, calendars and some advertising work followed. These early professional years saw a dazzling range of illustration briefs, from drawing a spider's spinnerets, to painting a colour double page spread of parasitic ascaris worms - the brief being "Can you make it look like a plate of spaghetti?" Not quite the calibre of Natural History illustration I was searching for.
In 1987 I entered the British Birds magazine's Bird Illustrator of the Year competition, which I was so surprised to win. After receiving my award from the famous wildlife artist Keith Shackleton at the Mall Galleries, I was inspired and all set for the wide variety of bird illustration work which has followed ever since.
I've been privileged to work with many outstanding ornithologists, biologists and artists on some wonderful projects at home and abroad.
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