Founded in 2018, BrghterCraft is an art, crafts, and design website that aims to help artists develop their skills – regardless of their skill level.
We offer how-to guides, tips and tricks, and inspiration for artists of all types.
We look at tattooing, painting, drawing, and much more.
From step-by-step beginners guides to detailed technical analysis, we hope there is something that will help everyone.
Our goal is to provide a one-stop shop for all your artistic questions and needs.
Whether you’re looking to improve your skills, find new ideas, or just be inspired, we try to give you helpful, accurate advice at all times.
You can comment and ask any questions below each article, and I will answer as soon as possible.
We believe that everyone has the potential to be creative, and we’re here to help you unleash your inner artist!
My Story
Hello, my name is Ian, and I am one of the founders and lead art writer at BrighterCraft.
I started this website because I’ve always been passionate about art and wanted to share my knowledge with others.
As a child, I was always drawing, but I was always frustrated at my lack of competence.
I would draw cars and animals all the time, but my passion was drawing racing motorcycles. I doodled endlessly and spent hours designing new and exciting paint schemes and bodywork for racing motorbikes I had drawn.
As a teenager, music became a huge part of my life, and my art found an outlet by designing posters, logos, flyers, and other band-related art. I studied technical drawing at college and at the same time, discovered Celtic knotwork.
It was at this time I had my first tattoo.
I became good friends with the tattoo artist and constantly bombarded him with questions.
Eventually, learning to tattoo from him and two other local tattoo artists.
Although I have done many tattoos since, I decided it wasn’t really what I wanted to do all the time.
In my twenties, I turned to make art from natural objects.
I would cut wedges and slices of tree trunks with a chainsaw, sand them down and paint them with complex knotwork patterns and other ancient art.
I discovered pyrography too, which worked really well with the knotwork.
I wanted to carve but found it really hard.
Then I found an old dremmel and figured out I could easily cut and shape wood.
The tools and artwork got bigger, and I used chainsaws, belt sanders, angle grinders, and even oxy-acetalene to burn and shape the wood.
I used many of the art skills learned in my professional life and my life as a musician, but I was never a full-time artist. I never had any formal training other than a few years of art at school.
I’ll be honest and admit that I hadn’t ever really considered myself to be an artist.
One of the big turning points was when I had an accident setting up a stage show.
I crushed several vertebrae and completely shattered my right elbow, which was my dominant arm. I was confined to a wheelchair and told I would never walk again (that is a different story).
Art became a therapy, and I began to explore abstract art much more; despite having little confidence in my ability, I began to paint.
I used acrylic paint to start and loved the fact it dried quickly so that I could work really fast.
It taught me mistakes don’t matter, and I had endless sheets of paper that were painted over so many times they felt like plastic sheets.
I learned how much texture can play a part in painting and would mix sand, cement, and all sorts of things in the paint just to see what happened.
My stubborn nature helped me get past being told I wouldn’t walk again, and after an elbow replacement and just over a year, I got back on two feet.
I might never be able to walk like I used to, but I could walk – I had won, but it was a battle I would fight again.
Not being able to ride a motorcycle gave me time to work on them, and I put all those hours of doodling as a child to work.
I taught myself how to spray and even how to do reverse masking to create intricate multi-color motorcycle paint jobs.
As riding took over again from working on the motorcycles, I began to paint more on canvas, wooden boards, and paper once more.
I discovered oil paints and even began to paint landscape paintings. It reached a point where every wall of my home was covered in paintings. I started to give them away as presents to friends there were so many.
This led to being exhibited at the South Bank Centre in London and more commissions. This is when painting actually started to earn me some money directly.
I still have a home full of paintings and sometimes sell them, but they are very personal so I often don’t want to sell them. I swap them around and replace them constantly so I am always surrounded by different art from different times of my life..
I still paint on everything from canvas to motorcycles, and I decided I would try and pass on some of the lessons I have learned along the way to help other people who may or may not consider themselves artists.
I have learned and discovered multiple ways to monetize my art over the years and am now lucky enough to have several diverse, art-related income streams.
Whether painting on canvas, spray painting a motorcycle or designing new printed art products, I treat every new project as another adventure in the art world.
