Martin Allen was born in England in 1969 and has always had a pencil or brush in his hand, ever since he can remember!

Martin has never had any formal art training but when leaving School he took up signwriting  and  design work and went on to designing one-off T-shirts.

In the late 80's I started designing Grafitti style work on T-shirts as at that time they were very popular.

After that he started landscapes and portraits of famous people, including George Michael, James Dean and Liam Gallagher, then he was approached to do a commission to paint a Dolphin in 1994 and that is when Martin found out that this is the subject for him.

Finally he found the subject that he really enjoyed and got a positive response from it.

Martin has gone on to study dolphins for the same length of time and in the year 2000 he had his first wild encounter with them off the coast of Gran Canaria.

While on an old Spanish fishing boat and they were surrounded by about 60 wild Dolphins and to top it all on the way back a giant Whale surfaced.......and boy was she big!

Since then dolphins, whales and marine wildlife are mostly the only subject painted now.

Technique

All of Martin's paintings are acrylic on canvas board or 400lb paper, most of the paintings are now on canvas board as he works better on a textured surface and prefers to frame without glass.

Martin's dolphins are built up from a number of washes (as many as 30), then corals and rocks are straight out the tube thick to get the rough and bright texture.

Once finished, the subjects in a painting are carefully built up again with washes to give the feeling that they are really in the ocean. This is a very time consuming method but the result is worth watching paint dry in between washes!

Out and about

Martin has exhibited his work all over the country and has had work in local Galleries, high quality signed prints are produced of every new painting from now on as demand for original paintings is getting greater.

Martin has had numerous one man shows at libraries and theatres in the Essex area and won several awards for his dolphin paintings.

Lately he has enjoyed giving demonstrations to local art clubs where Martin has given talks on dolphins and demonstrated his painting technique. Since this website has been up and running it has given Martin the opportunity to sell his paintings worldwide, as far away as Singapore & Malaysia. His work has been published in magazines around the UK & the painting "Healing Waters" was used as a front cover on The Animal Times magazine in Memphis Tennessee. Martin has received feedback from around the world regarding his artwork which is always appreciated and welcomed. Every new painting he does now will be made into professional quality prints that are colour matched by the printers and produced in Giclee' 7 colour light fast pigment inks.

This makes a cheaper option to buy Martin's work and also as the images are digital they are available as high quality images for publishing.

At the moment this is Martin's hobby with the hope of eventually being a living.

Hope you enjoy the paintings of Martin Allen

Kind regards

dolphin-art.co.uk