About Us
Who is Paul Priestley?
I was born in Yorkshire, England and started teaching way back in the ’70’s. I soon became the Head of Art at a Grammar School, a post I held for a number of years, before joining the senior management team of that school. In 2000 I left teaching to explore new pastures, setting up my own arts business, ‘Paul Priestley Arts’ to provide art courses and interactive art events. I also found time to develop my own painting.

Beginnings
In 2008 I came up with the idea of running art workshops in school, but I needed something to make my workshops stand out from the crowd. I came up with the idea of running art workshops as famous artists, such as Picasso.
An Artist in School
I started the day with a re-enactment of the great artist’s life, in which children had parts to play, followed by a drawing workshop in which I showed children how to draw in the style of the artist. The afternoon started with a painting demonstration where I showed children how to paint like the famous artist. For the rest of the afternoon children created their own paintings, based on their drawings from the morning.
They produced wonderful work. I recreated the lives of 12 artist’s with workshops to match and by 2016 I could not cope with the demand. I am lucky enough to have my own studio, so the solution to the problem was obvious. Reproduce my recreations of famous artist’s lives as videos that school’s to use via my website.
You can find details of the Famous Artist videos here. I also run a YouTube Channel where you’ll find lots of easy drawing tutorials – which are FREE and aimed at children – which cover all aspects of drawing and painting and could be used to compliment a Famous Artist video to create a wonderfully inspiring art experience.
Paul Priestley
See what schools have said about, Paul’s Great Artist workshops
See the present list of Famous Artist videos – more will be added
See what people from around the world have said about my Drawing and Painting Art Tutorials
Enjoy my Art History videos?
Latest Tweets follow us
#Indianartist Amrita Sher-Gil https://t.co/bUS0wlzRsG became a national treasure in #India, her #paintings require… https://t.co/Ds75fNqcOM
This painting https://t.co/eJELZyUJcV by #GeorgesSeurat is very famous, but do you think some of the people in the… https://t.co/oyQfDAbHL5
Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic https://t.co/7pSLUWfx2J is one of America’s most iconic #paintings, much paro… https://t.co/0QHM9PyKP2
Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte https://t.co/eJELZyUJcV can look a little odd, b… https://t.co/kUkSX0PZil
Using line in #drawing is very important because it tells us so much. My tutorial https://t.co/bRr30qc6J7 shows how… https://t.co/PHObbfnkDM
He was known as the painter of love. Marc Chagall https://t.co/rgOf4tyuu7 is an amazing #artist who not only painte… https://t.co/gAgU9qMX78