Gabrielle Marlow emailed the college recently to let us know of some fantastic news and how she was getting on after completing the pet portraits diploma with myself. I am always thrilled to hear from my past students and love to hear of their successes. I hope you find Gabrielle’s story inspiring, don’t forget to visit her website here – www.gabriellemarlowartgallery.
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A couple of years ago I decided to do the pet portrait diploma through the London Art College with teacher Melanie Phillips. The course was just what I needed and really taught me to take time to work out details of animals and everything related to creating a good painting of pets.
Since then I have worked quite steadily at the business side and have received a good number of commissions. I created a website and posters, business cards, flyers, and now I’m making some fine art cards of my work with my details on the back and selling some framed prints of the artworks as well.
Something rather exiting happened to me last year. I had a poster in the local vegetable shop and a lady saw my poster, which gave me a very good commission. The events manager of the Summer Show jumping Classic CSI-W called me and asked me if I could paint the prize for this year’s competition at the International Equestrian Centre in Sydney. She asked me to do a painting of world cup qualifying champion Billy Raymont jumping on his stunning horse. I was also to be there on the opening night where they talked about myself, the artist and then I had to hand over the painting to the prize winner.
It was a really great experience, the winner loved the painting and I’m doing next year’s prize too and this will be a painting of Jenny Sheppard jumping her horse. The commissions are size 40cm x 50 cm and done in oils. I was able to promote the animal portraits and equine art this way as I was also invited to display some more of my work. The painting was also used for all the advertising of the Show jumping competition and appeared in various Horse Magazines and on all brochures. The same will happen with the next painting. I look at other artists and see that I still have quite a way to go to get to the high standard that some artists have achieved, but I’m happily working towards that.
Gabrielle Marlow
www.gabriellemarlowartgallery.
