Tim Martindale

Tim Martindale was born and educated in Bude and following his A-Grade Art A-Level, studied Technical Illustration at Art School for four years. He then re-located to Bristol and worked as a freelance illustrator for many top advertising agencies producing work for British Aerospace, Sony, Amtrak, Imperial Tobacco, Avon Rubber and many other international companies, using a variety of different media. He has had the honour of appearing in 'The Yellow Book of Excellence in Art & Design' showcasing British artistic talent and also contributed to 'The Manual of Airbrushing', considered to be the premier Airbrushing textbook.

However, by the end of the 1980's he recognised that this particular world was about to be turned on its head by the growing influence of computers. He foresaw the imminent redundancy of airbrush artists, as graphic designers relished the prospect of 'electronic airbrushing', so he decided to re-locate back in his native Bude and started Timart Design & Publishing to diversify back to graphic design and to promote the tourist trade - embracing the new computer technology!

The highly realistic nature of Tim's illustration always relied heavily on photographs for visual reference and considerable time at Art School was centred on photographic skills.

These abilities were now to come to the forefront within his business as the brochures he produced relied heavily on the use of these attractive images. Over the last decade or so he has acquired a huge library of photographs of Cornwall and in particular, of Bude. However, as 'art', he felt that 'straight' photographs did not quite work. They were insufficiently individualistic. So he set about producing a series of images that started as photographs and ended up as 'paintings' - combining the best of both worlds. He sees an amusing irony in the complete inversion of his training; when using paintbrushes and airbrushes he combined to make a painting look as much like a photograph as possible; he now, twenty years on, is making his photographs look like paintings!

Email: info@timmartindale.co.uk