Paint & Palette

Alain Nichele will demonstrate his process in creating a scene of a café with backlighting and reflections.

Alain Started drawing at around 5 years of age being fascinated with Disney Characters and learning to draw by copying them out of comic books.

He studied graphic design at the Johannesburg College of art obtaining a higher diploma in 1983 and then went into the advertising field where he worked his way up to Creative Director of a major Agency handling accounts such as FNB, Dulux Paints, Daewoo Motors, Milky Lane, Appletiser, Just Juice, Gold Fields and Samsung to name just a few.

In 1999 Alain opened up his own design studio which specialized in corporate identity design, three-dimensional display design as well as TV commercial direction. He later branched out into Interior design (Corporate and Residential) as well as landscape design. Amongst this he also designed and owner-built two residential homes.

Alain hung up his advertising gloves in 2005 when the opportunity arose to buy Pearl Paints (Pty) Ltd – a paint manufacturing company in Edenvale which formerly belonged to his Father-in-law. He still runs and owns it today.

From 2005 to 2018 (a period of 13 years) Alain stopped all form of creative design and drawing concentrating on his new business and only picked up a brush again in 2018 when he attended a watercolour course with Grant Wood. This ignited his interest in watercolours and has been an avid fan since.

He now paints and draws for pure pleasure pursuing his passion of graphite pencil drawing and his fascination with watercolours.

Alain does not profess to be an expert in watercolours by any means but rather likes to explore how watercolours can suit his style and interpretation of art – breaking a lot of the watercolour rules along the way.