Welcome to my studio

Hi I am known as ZaragonArt, I am an artist and crafter interested in many different media, techniques and forms. I love learning and trying out new things.

Although I have only recognised myself as an artist since 2010 it turns out that I have been creative for most of my life.

Now over 50 years old I recall being interested in art right back in my first school where I also developed an aversion to art over one particular imaginary still life. I seem to have forgotton this by middle school where quite a few of my images were kept by the school and displayed for many years.

Surprisingly in senior school I had little interest in formal art and my creativity developed in different ways. Metal work, mainly lathe work, interested me most but never really developed further.

Around that time though my creativity again changed direction, learning to play a brass instrument and into electronics and computer programming.

Although I didn't continue to play an instrument I added model making, particularly remote control to the creative rosta but 2010 is when I finally moved back into more traditional art. Funnily enough it was the computing creativity that got me restarted in art. For a long time I have built my own PCs but in 2010 decided that the next one had to have a uniquely painted case and that I was going to do the airbrushing.

Airbrushing had facinated me as a youngster and I was determined to try it. Being a water cooled PC the theme for the case became an aquarium/under sea scene and whilst simplistic seemed ambitious for a newcomer to airbrushing.

I seriously enjoyed the airbrushing and I was back into both art and crafting. From there I tried out cross-stitch in order to complete a special picture and then latch-hook rugs. With each project I continued to find a lot of enjoyment in producing the finished item. Over the next couple of years I added carving, pyrography, punchcraft, glass engraving and high speed rotary carving. For reasons that I no longer recall I lost inspiration or desire for art in mid to late 2012 and from then only occasionally dabbling in one or other craft.

In March 2015 I discovered Twitch.TV had a creative section. If you don't know Twitch, it is an Internet site where users can broadcast themselves playing games and interact with viewers. Prior to that I'd watched gamers but the creative section captured my attention and interest. In April that year I was chatting to an airbrush artist as he broadcast, he managed to convince me to also broadcast and extracted a promise to do it soon.

I keep my promises and less than a week later I was broadcasting and doing art, live, consistently every night since then. This has proved both facinating and challenging, it has lead to me learning ever more craft/art forms including scraperboard and jewellery making.