FOR some of us just sending an email using an iPad is a big enough challenge.

But Jo Menhinick has gone several steps further. She uses hers to produce vibrant sketches without the need for pens, paint or paper!

Her equipment is as unusual as her subjects. She is inspired not by the picturesque scenes associated with most artists, but by the unloved, workaday corners of Worcester... its industrial estates!

The mother-of-three, who lives in McIntrye Road, St John's, Worcester, and runs her own design business, first picked up an iPad to draw with about two years ago.

The hand-held gadget is more usually used to send emails and browse the internet, but she finds it ideal for sketching, without any of the inconvenience entailed with paints.

She says: "I still love paper, and it will never be totally replaced by digital artwork. But the iPad is quick to set up, and there's no mess. I can also share what I've done on social media afterwards."

She says producing iPad art requires similar techniques as conventional drawing and painting.

"It is about observation and getting that emotional feeling the subject gives you down from the brain, through the arm into the digital pen and onto the iPad.

Mrs Menhinick says her job as a graphic and web designer means she spends a lot of time working with manufacturing businesses around Worcestershire, and her exposure to this world has caught her artistic eye.

"I really appreciate the architecture that houses these businesses," she says. "We tend to turn our backs on industrial estates as the scruffy side of working life, but I love these places. They are where the unsung heroes of our economy work, and the buildings themselves have such a variety of styles and various states of repair."

Her pictures include scenes from Blackpole, Shrub Hill and even Berrows House, home of the Worcester News in Hylton Road, St John's, Worcester.

Her ambition is to create a series of iPad paintings of Worcester's industrial buildings, as well as adding to her portfolio of more traditional landscapes of the city and beyond.

Mrs Menhinick prints off, signs and frames her iPad pictures, and they are for sale. She also accepts commissions. Call 01905 428488 or email jo@jomenhinickdesign.co.uk