About

About Arty Shrew’s Gallery

Arty Shrew is my alter ego.  I also answer to Roz.  Although I am getting more and more comfortable as Arty Shrew which is scary.

I have am an illustrator and designer and work in a range of media and disciplines, graphic design, illustration and set and glass design. My pictures have been published in eleven children’s books and I taught art and design for seventeen years.

Creating Sadie and her rock pool is the most fun of my varied career.

I Started two years ago with one frieze as a welcome present for my granddaughter Sadie. Since then the project has grown into a whole world with a myriad of characters maps and stories.

It just keeps expanding.

My images tend to be complex and detailed and take a long time to create. My drawings are done in pencil and then scanned and painted in Photoshop.

I really believe children deserve well-crafted highly detailed illustrations that awe and inspire them. Pictures they want to visit time and time again.  I  dislike ‘dumbing down’ in any form. Children deserve the very best we can offer not the quickest or simplest.

I grew up on a diet of the most wonderful books with  illustrations which captured my imagination and took me to astonishing worlds. I am still visiting those kind of worlds in the books I read today and I try to emulate the quality of  work produced by those authors and artists. There are a great many illustrators that I admire they are usually people who work in detail and produce beauty. (See the links page.)

Where on earth do the Shrews come from?  They are a bit different from the other work.

I’ve been drawing them since 2002. They began life as cartoon characters for a publication and have multiplied.

I suppose they are my light relief. They are simpler and a bit quicker, but lots of fun.

I really hope you enjoy my collections as much as I enjoy creating them.

What about me?

I dote on my granddaughter but she lives in Australia and I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like. I acquired a grandson last month which is so exciting. A little brother for Sadie. I will have to make a world for him soon. Perhaps I will add him into the Wild Western Bays.

I am completely besotted with dogs, all animals really. I lost my dear old (14) German Shepherd in 2011 and I am surprised by the size of the hole that is still in my heart. I will get another in time.

I don’t do much else but draw and write. I have to own up to a fantasy books obsession and a love of movies and most art. Boy there is some stunning stuff around.

OK that’s it!  I know you dropped off  about 3 paragraphs back. . .