Cheltenham postie lands fairytale prize

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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A postman who dreams of becoming a professional artist has won an international competition to get his work published.

Darren Holtom, from Oakley, in Cheltenham, beat more than 3,000 hopefuls to land the front cover of Legends and Fairytales – a new fantasy roleplaying book.

The publishers were so impressed with the postie’s computer-generated artwork they also asked him to produce another 23 pictures for the inside pages.

Darren, 35, said: “It is something I have always been interested in. Digital art is what I really want to do, but I have to squeeze it in when I can at the moment.

“I saw the competition and decided to enter it. Then I found out I had won and my work was going on the front cover.

“I’m really pleased with it and hopefully it will be the springboard to bigger things.”

To produce the cover picture, Darren followed a tight brief from Dutch publishers Peter and Debbie Harmsen.

He took six weeks to complete the image using a special program on his computer. Each picture on the other pages also took about a fortnight to finish.

He was chosen ahead of artists from nine other countries to illustrate the book, which has been published and is available on internet sites like Amazon.

Darren is also starting to work on celebrity portraits as a route to reaching a mainstream audience.

He said: “I’ve been doing this for years now. It takes a while to do each picture but it’s worth it.

“It’s my passion, but with a family to support, I have to do my regular job as well.

“What I’m really hoping is that this will be seen by somebody.

“It’s great to see my work on the cover and now I want to do more. Hopefully the celebrity portraits will go some way to achieving that by being something that everyone can recognise.

“Then I’ll take it from there.”

To see more of Darren’s work, visit http://www.darrenholtom.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.