Portrait night

Portrait night with Dudley Svendsgaard. Two charcoal, gel pen, pencil and grey colour pencil portraits from a wine-bar opening in Amsterdam. Why did I give away the original of the top portrait? Wine, that’s why.

The learner

This is drawn (and painted) in ink, pencil and charcoal and depicts one of my students in Jakarta (where I pretended to be an English teacher for a few years in the early 90s).

It’s all about the lines, I’ve realised. No too much shading. When you first get into drawing, you think it’s all about the shading. But actually, if you get them right, lines work much quicker on the eye.