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Artist Tina Bone
My artistic talent came to light after winning a local art competition when I was just seven; and, on holiday in Italy at age eleven, I was commissioned to replace a wooden wall painting of Madonna and child which had burned during street celebrations. I completed it in the six weeks holiday, and it was put up in the street with a few firework celebrations. The only record I have is a very pale photograph taken by my brother-in-law who visited some 15 years later. (It sadly has also now been burned!) Self-taught, I turned professional artist in March 2005.
I have always painted in oils, though very few and far between, for friends and family, so had not really utilised my talent until recently when I fancied learning how to paint with water colours. Having serially attended evening classes for all sorts of things during my life, I decided to enroll in a botanical drawing class. Although the tutor was very competent, I didn't really cotton on to using water colours 'properly' because I could not be 'wishy-washy'. But I did very much like doing the botanicals so carried on painting after the classes in my very own vivid style. I also attended two-day classes for pen and ink and spring flowers in water colour. One of the tutors asked me why I had come because it was very obvious I could already draw and paint. She asked me to take in my work to show the class (and they clapped when the tutor had finished showing it, which made me cry!)
I like using pen and ink and pencil to illustrate all aspects of my childhood love of nature, which has been re-kindled since planting a small wild garden (to provide live subjects) 3 years ago.
Wherever possible, I work life-size using live specimens, or by using photographs I have taken in the field. My prints, reviewed twice in 2005 in the Cambridge Evening news, were described as exquisite botanicals and immortalised in print .
The nature pictures are usually painted in blocks of twelve from which the handcrafted limited edition calendars are designed and produced, as well as A5 and A6 cards.
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