art director | production designer | lecturer
I’ve been updating my web site and realised that it’s nearly two years since I last posted…. time flies! Quick round up of what I’ve been up to in that time: In October 2022, while I was in Turin taking part in another Art Department Masterclass with Grenville, we met supervising art director Elaine Kusmishko […]
A long time ago, in a distant land, I went to art college. The past is a strange place to visit. I was never cut out to be a fine artist and relished the opportunities to bunk off and play with my new chums in fringe theatre. The epic Forkbeard Fantasy introduced me to the […]
In October 2022, Grenville and I had the pleasure of taking part in the second Art Department Masterclass session to be held in Turin. This session focused on ‘building the worlds: working with post-production’ and the presentations were given by production designer and art director Paul Inglis (‘Children of Men’, ‘Blade Runner 2049’), VFX line […]
One of my favourite parts of running a course is setting up the classroom. It’s really important to make the space feel welcoming and exciting. I am very privileged to have examples of set drawings from some of the best draughting talents in the industry which are displayed on the walls. There’s also a wide […]
I’m really looking forward to running the new ‘Intro to Hand Drafting’ course at LFS next week (13-18 September)! No matter how much digital technology encroaches on our world, the fundamental ability to communicate through drawing will always be essential. Eye/brain/pencil coordination is the best way to work out a set or scenery detail and […]
That’s another successful Absolute Beginners: Introduction to the Art Department completed! Five participants given an intensive six-day induction to all the core elements of art department working: script breakdowns, schedules & call sheets, technical drawing (metric and imperial!), white card model making, location surveys, health & safety and plenty of reference material to dip into. […]
What another strange year…. started out teaching on-line for the London Film School, then moved into the classroom at Pinewood Studios and the Creative Media Skills team. That rolled into a combined course working with students at Bucks College on the diploma course for Art Department and Prop Making. A wonderful opportunity then arose that […]
I’ve always enjoyed working away from London, the opportunity to really get to know somewhere by living there for weeks and months is wonderful. My latest project is a little Gaelic language drama called ‘Bannan’ set on the Isle of Skye. I’d never been to Skye before and wow, what a treat I’ve been missing!! […]
It only seems like yesterday that I was working with participants at the London Film School and sharing my art department knowledge…. since then I’ve been totally immersed in a HUGE project that I can’t talk about, working from home and getting back to basics on the drawing board! Such a joy to be working […]
After five weeks of working with the Creative Media Skills Institute at Pinewood, I’m heading back to Covent Garden to run an intensive six-day course for art department new entrants. This is one of my favourite courses and it’s great to be back in the ‘classroom’! Due to Covid, we have a reduced number of […]