Hello, I’m Jill Partington, I am 63 years old and have one son, Matt.  I come from Bolton but moved to Lytham St Annes 7 years ago to live with my partner of 9 years, Peter Edwards.

So why art now?  Well I was always good at drawing when I was at school around a hundred years ago, but failed my O-Level as I was rubbish at painting.  I then did a few drawings of Disney characters for my son’s wall when he was a toddler and since then…. Yes you are right, I have never picked up a pencil.

I got into watching Portrait and Landscape of the year when they started and safe to say am obsessed with the two programmes and was always saying to myself when watching “gosh I wish I could do that!” and making comments to Peter about wanting to draw.  Still I did nothing about it until back in March this year I saw art classes being advertised on Facebook and made an enquiry and that was that.  I started the classes – a ten week course – back in May and I loved the lessons that much that I enrolled on the second term.  The lady that runs the course is Julie Kenworthy and she is a professional artist who has totally got me hooked by her encouragement, motivation and inspiration, in fact I am now never without a pencil in my hand apart from when I am working of course.

I would also like to say how much inspiration I have got from Jason Morgan, artist.  He does fantastic tutorials and great pastel drawings.