About Me

About Me 

My name is Ivor Harrison, however, all my friends and family; with the exception of my parents, call me Harry. As of writing this (Oct 2015) I am 41, I've been married to my beautiful wife for 20 years this Feb and together we have three wonderful children. I am originally from Belfast in N Ireland, however, I now live in England as my wife is English. 

I joined the British Army aged 16, it was the only thing I ever wanted to do. From the age of 4, I used to walk about the house in my Action Man costume, and have been told by my Mother that they practically had to wrestle it off me before going to bed. As a young child I used to listen to my Dad and his brothers all talking about their time in the Army and it just stuck with me. As soon as I became the age the Army were looking for, off I went. I served for 13 years and loved every single minute of my time as a British Soldier. I had the extra privilege of serving in Her Majesties Queens Guards, The Irish Guards, which for me was such an honour to be part of this elite band of brothers. 

However, unfortunately my dream was cut short by quite a number of years I had left in the Army. Whilst on an Operational Tour, I sustained a serious spinal injury and that was the end of my career. As an infantry soldier, fitness is number one priority and I lost that the second my spinal chord snapped. Needless to say I spent quite a few years in and out of both military and civilian hospitals, but in the end, it wasn't just the physical aspect that caused immense pain, I very quickly became deeply clinically depressed. I'd lost the job I loved, I could no longer work due to my disability and other complications attached to the injury and so my wife became the main earner in the house. I felt like a failure as a husband, a friend, a man and a father. 

After leaving the Army, I tried to shake myself out of the rut and became involved in technology. I started a web site and youtube channel, were I would review tech items and talk about new tech. However I never really enjoyed doing this, it became incredibly intense and not much fun, so I stopped it. 

So now down to the reason I have started this blog, my eldest daughter is an Art student and as a child I used to love drawing, but never really expanded on this. Any way, my daughter handed me some of her part supplies and told me to draw something. I found a few images on Google and began drawing. I seriously could not believe how calm, relaxed and happy it made me feel. I am in constant pain and take a large cocktail of medication to help, so I am always tense and in so much pain, but drawing really helped me. From that point on I started to draw as often as I could, my problem is that I can only spend very short periods of time drawing at anyone time, so completing a drawing can take a bit of time. 

I am by no means an artist, not by a long chalk, but I am learning, which is the reason I really wanted to start this blog. The are so many amazing artists out there with fantastic blogs, offering outstanding tutorials. So what I thought would be a good idea was to aim my blog at people like myself, people who love art but have no qualifications, and are pretty much self taught. For me personally, I am just starting out and learning and I am going to share my progress via this blog. I am also going to focus the majority of this blog on reviewing art supplies and passing on my findings to anyone interested. 

Thank you so much for checking in on my blog, this is not a fancy well put together blog, it is simply a platform for me to share my passion, progress and findings, on to you. I really look forward to meeting new people via this blog and can't wait to get started.