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Within the Drawings
pages are portraits done mainly with pencil. I tend to specialise
in portraiture and the object for me is to somehow, if I can, make
the portrait come 'alive'. I feel I can never stop learning as an
artist and with that thought comes the promise of future portraits
not yet drawn. Aside from portraiture the Design
pages contain works produced digitally on computer and here too,
there is much room for improvement. I think most creative people
would agree that an artist is always learning.
It was all about one picture that day. You saw some great works of art, perhaps dozens, but it was one picture that day that drew you like a magnet. You kept walking away from it........ only to return and look again, trying to unlock it's secrets. For me a good portrait can do this. For someone else a good landscape may do the trick. I remember seeing Leighton's Pavonia and I couldn't tear myself away from her gaze, not that I wanted to. Wherever I walked in that room at the Tate gallery her eyes followed me. I can only say it's that feeling at that precise moment in time that makes me try to draw portraits myself. Like Pavonia's gaze, I can't tear myself away from it......... not that I'd want to.
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It's in the museums that one learns to paint.........It's in the museums
that he acquires the taste for painting that nature alone can never give.' Pierre Auguste Renoir
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I learned to draw by studying photos of family and friends. I attended local life drawing classes to improve my ability to draw from the live model. My style would have to be 'photo realist', as I put it, because of the influence of photography on my work. It was while looking through an art magazine that I came across the work of John Everett Millais. His early work could, in my opinion, be described as 'photo realist', with its attention to detail. The first time I saw his paintings 'Mariana' and 'The Black Brunswicker' of the1850's I couldn't believe such life-like detail could be achieved with a paintbrush. At last I had found a style of art that I felt I could identify with. From here I discovered the PreRaphaelites and from there, the work of one man shone out ; Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Frequent trips to the Tate Gallery, London followed and I have continued to pop in there ever since.
In order to learn more about his technique I had a crack at doing Rossetti's 'Proserpine' in a mixed media of emulsion paint and oil pastel and had 'mixed' results (click on thumbnail right). I came out of the experience knowing that this painting deserves more credit than perhaps it is given. Rossetti painted eight versions of it and in my opinion the version currently housed in the Manchester City Art Gallery, England is the finest.
I've been in to web design for a while now and it seemed a natural development to try to digitally produce works of art. I have to say that nothing quite compares with standing in front of an easel and physically seeing and feeling the drawing or painting you're working on. It's been a steep learning curve and at times both art and the science of computing have been at loggerheads with each other. From Degas to Burne Jones and beyond. ' Get your own style! '…I hear you say. I'm getting it. It's just taking a bit of time……To the Drawings
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Copyright Paul Noonan 2006 all rights reserved
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elcome
to Portr8s
and thanks for dropping by. This website features the artwork of
Paul Noonan from London. This site is best viewed at a screen resolution
of 1024 x 768. Featured are examples of drawings and artwork going
way back, together with digital art. Click on the thumbnails to
view pictures in detail
and click on this magnifying glass symbol
for even closer views. 
have by no means come from an academically qualified background
where art is concerned. I was a late starter, having failed to achieve
an 'Ordinary' level exam pass in Art. What actually made me want
to pick up a pencil and draw was looking at the artwork of others
from long past. I had never been to a gallery in my life before.
Living in Kent, the centre of London was only an hour away so I
took a trip to the National Gallery and from then on I was hooked.
It was the French Impressionists that grabbed my attention first.
I wanted to draw like Degas and paint like Renoir. Try as I did,
I had no chance!
