Timothy O'Brien

Even though I have always enjoyed painting and drawing from an early age, having grown up in a creative family, it wasn't until I was eight or nine that I started drawing more seriously, initially copying comic book illustrations. Then, not long after I joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager in 1983, I received my first commission for an aviation painting from a fellow cadet: a watercolour of two F-16s thundering down a rain-soaked runway.

Upon leaving school at 16, I worked with my Dad who took me on as his "apprentice", training me into the family commercial art business producing all aspects of illustration for advertising and print. I went freelance after 6 years, supplying industry with hand-produced illustrations for marketing purposes as well as pursuing specialist aviation & military topics at the same time.