Portrait, Animal, landscape Art
by Mark Turnbull
About
Mark Turnbull
Who is Mark Turnbull?
Mark, 43, lives in a little village called Middleton, just outside the market townn of Sudbury, Suffolk (The birthplace of Thomas Gainsborough). He is a qualified hypnotherapist/counselor, and a highly experienced drummer, having played in numerous covers bands, and a critically aclaimed original indie band for 10 years.
Mark began drawing at the age of 15, and at that time focused on pencil work, and sold a few pencil drawings of local village scenes in his teens to various customers. After a prolongued break of 25 years from drawing due to lack of confidence, he discoverd to his excitement a natural talent for stipple drawing at the age of 40. After completing a number of stipple drawings.... a year later he moved to colour work due to the fact that he could only produce a few stipple drawings a year. Having never used colour before, his confidence in this medium quickly grew, and after only producing three colour drawings it became obvious that he had a natural talent for this too. He is now producing portraits on demand for many very happy customers.
Mark is now working around his busy commission schedule to produce work for an upcoming exhibition in his home town of Sudbury.
Mark's own private works will consist of pieces depicting his own ideas of beauty....wildlife, landscapes/town/villagescapes, and people. All from his own photographs of things that catch his eye on his travels.
Exhibition information
The exhibition will be held at the Art and Framing Centre, Sudbury, Suffolk from the beginning of May 2016, to the end of May. All pieces will be for sale, eitber the original or prints. All peices are from original reference photos taken by Mark himself, and are therefore his own unique vision.
Stipple art with pen and ink
What is pen and ink stipple art.​

Stippling is the technique of using tiny dots to create and image/piece of art. I use a black, high quality pen to lay the dots down on paper. The dots are individually and carefully placed in such a way that creates the light and dark areas of the piece. Dots are placed close together for dark areas, and further apart for light areas, the end result is a unique and life like piece of art that will fascinate all who set eyes upon it.
A stippled piece of art has a certain quality and sheen that no other technique has. Part of the fascination is that it is made up enitirely of dots, and people will marvel at this fact....and indeed some may not even believe it until they look very closely. In fact, take a look at the image on the left. This is a tiny crop taken from my piece called "True Love" in the gallery.....here you can clearly see the individual dots that make up the entire piece.
A stippled piece usually takes one - three months to complete... working 8 hours a day, depending on its size, how intricate and detailed it is, and how dark it is. Obviouly darker areas need more dots therefore more time. So the commission prices for these pieces naturaly reflect their uniquness, attention to detail, time taken to produce them, and the high quality of the finished piece. I am taking commissions for wedding portraits, and any other pen and ink portrait you wish to have in the pen and ink stipple style.
Colour pencil and Pastel pencil
Mark uses the highest quality proffessional, artist grade colour pencils and pastel
pencils for his colour work. They have a high lightfastedness rating meaning that they will not be damaged and fade with prolongued exposure to sunlight, and are rich and bright in colour.
Mark's aim is to produce a vibrant, accurate represtation of the subject, whether it be a portrait or a landscape. Some people call this hyper-realism or photo-realism.
These pieces take a fraction of the time to complete as compared to stipple work, so the pricing reflects this. Depending on the subject....how many people, or how detailed the background is etc, they can take any where from 1 week to 2 weeks.