The subject: My characters

They might not remember it but I was recently asked about the story of my portraits and characters - why certain people or faces? As ever, it has taken me a while to think about my answer and even longer to get it down on ‘paper’.

Knowing what the subject should be is difficult and takes time as well as energy. A few years back I did a self-portrait and it worked, so I repeated the styles/rules that I imposed and produced a portrait of one of my favourites, Keith Haring. Unlike a lot of my previous compositions and paintings, the process was pretty quick and I got to painting very soon after the initial drawing. I was doing what I love with far less effort and thought - plus the results were pleasing (in my opinion). I really felt I was onto something!

For me, the energy and thought in my artistic process are focused on the techniques, layers, colours etc… that I use - this takes up a lot of mental energy and so I need to conserve energy elsewhere and I guess it was composition or subject matter where I opted to cut some corners (deliberately and hopefully not at the expense of my artwork). Given how happy I was with the first few drawings and paintings that I produced following this method, I decided to stick to it. After Keith Haring, there was Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein - the latter was on display at the Mrs Jones Art Shop & Gallery in Shrewsbury (it’s a lovely gallery - check it out HERE). I was really pleased with all of them and lots of digital prints of characters have followed. A recent commission (see below) was also great fun and developed my practice further.

If you want to know more about my approach to art then I explain more here - just give it a click!

Anyway, back to the main focus for this post: my original characters and ‘recognisable’ portraits are not much more than stereotypes, figures of my imagination, my captured drawing instinct, all to allow me to convey what I think is most important about art and painting - the process, art history, methods, techniques, pigments, colours and visual impact of the artworks (not much then). They might not bring about revolution but for me they contain a lot of depth, meaning and thought, which hopefully people would care about too! I also like doing them, they seem quite fun and I have got OK at them, which is probably more important than anything I have written above.

I have taken massive inspiration from some of my favourite artists, including, Peter Howson, Yoshitomo Nara and George Condo, who all repeat their characters and I am sure they have their own story and significance too.

Outside of these big names, there are so many other brilliant contemporary examples to use for inspiration. James-Lee Duffy’s drawings are a great place to start. Bold, brave and I think just great examples of what you can do with a simple line or drawing. It helps that he has used a lovely fat black crayon or pastel, which I love - no mucking about or going back!

Check out more of James-Lee’s work here. Also see him taking about his work below.

Anyway, I leave you with a few more of my characters below.