Do you get turned on when you're painting?

This one is the funniest really. It's the one most about wishful thinking other than "do you paint in the nude?" If I wanted to make more money and sell my soul I'd say "oh yeah baby as soon as I pick up that paintbrush I'm a seething naked mass of pure erotic ecstasy" Unfortunately the truth is also funnier to me, so I do like to say that I'm actually in paint spattered track pants and reading glasses squinting and getting angry when things don't go right while listening to bad daytime telly and yelling at the dog for barking at the chinchilla.

The photographs are the most fun.

My models are people I know, the poses are achieved  in really fun nights in with bottles of wine and dressing up gear. It's about making images out of nothing, it's as much about the photographs which are made to give to the model for their own enjoyment (as in "wow I look great") as they are sketches for later paintings.

The colours are made using different sources of light in the staging, the poses are found in movements. I say "go like this" while putting myself into the position I've imagined. It's an organic process which is always new, always exciting and fascinating. What the new model will bring to the process, what the paintings will look like at the end.

There's a lot of wine, a lot of oooh! and aaaah! a lot of laughing, a bit of mischief. But it's not sexy. My friends are lush. Gorgeous sexy women. But I don't fancy them. For my sins, I find men attractive.

So why don't I paint them? That's the next question I'll answer.