Samuel Beckett

I always found Samuel Beckett's face immensely expressive, beautiful even; with those piercing, youthful eyes looking out intently from that wise, craggy face. Whilst doing this portrait I scanned in some old paper, streaked with creases, that I intended to use as a textured background. I noticed that the paper creases ran across the subject's facial features, inadvertently echoing the real creases and folds in Beckett's wrinkled skin.

I decided to utilize this happy accident as I realised how it seemed to suit the image of the famous poet and playwright setting his thoughts and experiences down on the surface of the paper, and of how that paper manuscript then becomes almost an extension of the writer; a physical record of his thoughts and ideas, set down for others to read.

Derren Brown

I reckon Derren Brown is the most fascinating bloke in England, and if anyone disagrees, just remember he has powers beyond your imagination and could mind-melt your feeble brain with the vastness of his intellect...

Mark E Smith Complete (Kinda...)

Mark E Smith-in-progress

Watched the Imagine documentary on the making of The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street then listened to Queen 2 on Spotify whilst starting a drawing of Mark E Smith from The Fall. Amazingly, no drugs or alcohol were involved during this process!

Playtime

I've used this technique before and I'm not sure whether to pursue it further in my illustration work. It's a combination of both photography and the hand-drawn. When done correctly it can be very striking, and also very beautiful but the balance between the photographic elements and the hand-rendered stuff is extremely crucial to maintain the look of something hybrid. The aim is to create a work of illustration that is neither one of these nor the other, but something unique within itself. If you see what I mean...(!)

Blaxploitation

Black people are portrayed in the media as either pimps, whores, hustlers, junkies, dealers or, conversely, as police captains, or city mayors. They epitomise braggadocio or street style or just plain "Cool" with a capital C. They wear the right gear, play the right music and are superior at sports. In many ways they exist at both extremes of society, with seemingly no middle ground. This unfair, warped media invention is used to sell every kind of "Street" commodity from training shoes to jewelry, but do you ever see a black person fronting a car campaign?

This illustration depicts an archetype: a black female gangsta; attitude oozing from every pore. The title comes from the 1970's film genre, the pinnacle of which is the film Shaft (1971). This character is as unreal as Superman and only ever exists in the movies. Blaxploitation, it seems, is still very much with us.

Phil Hale

I worship Phil Hale. No, really - I actually kneel down each night in my bedroom and place candles in front of a shrine devoted to him. The guy is a total bona fide genius and his paintings completely blow me away. I also love Sebastian Kruger, the German artist who produces the most amazing painted caricatures this or any other world has ever seen.

As a homage to these two giants of the contemporary art world I produced this caricature of Hale, executed in the style of Kruger. As the background to this image I used Phil Hale's painted motif of a brilliant blue sky and billowing cumulus cloud stack, of the kind usually found in his superb Johnny Badhair paintings. In case you're wondering the line that slices across the portrait is to ape the technique Hale himself often uses of painting one complete image on two separate canvas panels like the paintings by the Renaissance artists. I now eagerly await the legal papers citing libel, plagiarism and defamation of character from both of them...