The colours shown in each picture may not be exactly as they appear in the artwork due to differences in the display modes of individual monitors and screens.

I specialise in pastel and pencil art but not the topics I paint and draw; I just go with whatever piques my curiosity or looks like an interesting challenge.

Hello, my name is Mike. Welcome to my art. I was born in England when it was still in black and white, a few months before the Doctor first appeared in his TARDIS and JFK made his fateful trip to Dallas. Growing up, I soon learned which end of the pencil was supposed to go on the paper (it's the pointy bit; who says you can't learn from the Internet?) and spent time teaching myself to draw cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Wile. E Coyote. I even graduated to coloured pencils and felt tips eventually.
Then the outside world (school careers advisor) stepped in and told me I needed to go and do "something useful" so I spent the next million years (ok, slight exaggeration, but it's felt like that sometimes) doing 'proper jobs', earning money, spending it unwisely and gradually accumulating the portfolio of bills and debt that society expected.
One day, about 2006, I went to an arts and craft show at the NEC in Birmingham, looking for something that didn't involve logic, commuting and arguing over first pick on the holiday rota. Armed with my extensive knowledge of pencil usage, I came across the pastel pencil art of Colin Bradley and rediscovered the joy of scribbling on paper. Much to my surprise, some of those scribbles actually looked like pictures - if you squinted a bit and held them at arm's length and possibly odd angles - and the rest is... still ongoing today.
As for Scruff Monkey, that was one of the nicknames of my cat Molly, sadly no longer with us. It's the one she used to get in autumn when she had a habit of coming in wearing twigs, leaves and bits of grass in her fur, which she would clean off all over the kitchen floor while watching to make sure her bowl of tuna was being prepared.