Sale of Newbury Collection digital paintings to aid Soup Kitchen

Richard Howell’s new website The Newbury Collection, features a series of his digital paintings depicting some of Newbury's most “endearing architecture”.

Richard aims to sell high quality copies of these images, and to donate 25 per cent of profits to Newbury Soup Kitchen.

“I've had the pleasure of living in Newbury for about half of my life – but still not long enough to be considered a fully-fledged 'local' geezer!,” says Richard. “Neither am I a fully-fledged and qualified artist, but that hasn't prevented me from trying to capture some of the town's essence in artistic form.”

He works originally from photos and the artwork itself is produced digitally.

“I have a PC with a large touch-sensitive screen, (Microsoft Surface Studio) on which I ‘paint’ with a digital pen,” he explains.

“The software I use is a drawing package called Clip Studio Paint which has an impressive array of pens and brushes plus many features to embellish the artwork.”

Some of his images contain an element of humour. “ I've had a bit of fun and taken a fair degree of artistic licence by either inserting non-existent features or by airbrushing out certain unwanted elements, in one case a whole street!

Also featured in each picture, although sometimes hard to see, is his “little mongrel-mostly-terrier dog Yianni – full name Yiannis Papadogolis – who was rescued from Greece.

Visit www.rhart.uk to see more of Richard’s work.