VISUAL art at the Courtyard this month includes work in three very different styles.

New work from Alan Harrold, who teaches life drawing at Herefordshire College of Art and Design, appears like a rogues gallery of the young artist's day-to-day life.

His oil portraits are familiar following his participation in h.Art week's open exhibition but the Courtyard show includes contrasting pieces.

The 33rpm series includes portraits sketched within the time it takes to listen to a record.

"It's a new thing for me, to leave work unfinished," Alan said.

Like most people, Alan is interested in watching people and the figure.

His idea for the Courtyard gallery was to re-create the feeling of a corridor leading to a headmaster's office, where portraits of elderly characters in velvet smoking jackets bare no relevance to the viewer's life.

The models in Alan's work include his students, and his girlfriend's brother, people who mean something to him.

The 26-year-old moved to Hereford to take up an artist-in-residence position at HCAD, having gained a BA in drawing and painting at Greys in Aberdeen and a master's degree in conceptual art.

He's impressed with the city's 'busy little art scene' and has no plans to move on, until perhaps he's achieved his lifetime ambition of winning the BP national portrait award.

Around the corner from Alan, and in striking contrast, is Colouration by Stephen Vicary.

Based in Shrewsbury, Stephen is a full-time professional artist, whose abstract acrylics are on show around the country, as well as in Hereford's Tidal Wave gallery.

Sourced through the tradition of English landscape painting, the pictures are inspired through the colour, patterns, textiles, shapes and image sketches, abstracted by extensive use of sketchbooks. The paintings themselves are experiments in colour, and Steve can see in them exactly what he intended.

"My work is purely about painting," he said. "And about the buzz and elation that comes from being inspired."

Completing the triptych of work is Susie Tooby's unpredictable, potent and challenging show, 5+5.

The shows run 'til February 26.