Portrait

Last night we went to the National Portrait Gallery (at times like this, I love living in London) to draw some of the portraits and to learn what makes a good 'un. it's fascinating how much it's changed through the ages. The earliest ones are incredibly flat but begin to use little tricks (like horizontal and vertical reference points) to weight the figure. We did three sketches. My favourite of mine was this one below. I wish I WISH that I'd written down his name (oops) but I remember that he was a newspaper editor. The painting itself was done from a photo which I think comes across. I like the way he is filling the scene and peering at the viewer.