12/05/2026
I learned so much about portraiture by integrating the work of four great women artists into my Raft Of The Medusa painting, shown at last year. As well as scrutinising the choices and style of each reference, I tried to nudge them towards my style (last slides) without obligating the idiosynchracies of the original artists. Paula Rego's self portrait (image 3) was the hardest, because she did (brilliantly) distort from reality quite a lot. I cannot understate the extent to which doing relentless portrait sketching and figure drawing from life, and master copies in museums, helped me get these figures to fit credibly onto the 'raft'. Lighting, viewer angle, scale and perspective all had to be adjusted. I'm looking forward very much to doing a demo of my quick portrait sketching method, with live models, on Saturday June 27th at the SWA show. See link in bio for show info, there are some great talks, events and demos planned.
And... Kollwitz' etching seems as tragically relevant as ever. She modelled for it in the mirror with her young son Peter. He died in action, a teenager, in the first world war.
