"The Story Teller - Ponca" Drawing

Jeff Shiplee completed a Foundation Art course at his local college in London on leaving school. However, life rarely goes the way you expect, and a temporary job ended up as a nigh on 40-year career in the public sector. Throughout the years though, he regularly returned to his art learning to spread oils and acrylics around a board in a reasonably pleasing fashion, but then just before the first lockdown of 2020, he picked up his pencils again. He has not looked back, focusing on honing his love of realistic portrait drawing. Always intrigued by the photographs of Edward S. Curtis, the two passions combine together to produce the photo-realistic images that he now creates in his home studio in Suffolk, U.K. “I spend a long time looking at the source material, so it has to hold my interest. The images captured by Curtis portray people whose life experiences are far removed from my own, but I try to capture their essence and represent that in my work.” – Jeff Shiplee