I have always been fascinated by some people’s ability to depict another person accurately from life in real time, such as street caricaturists or caricaturists on the television. Getting a good likeness can be an elusive goal for a portrait artist and over the years I have laboured on it as well as done a pile of throwaway sketches of characters on TV (while watching TV) for practice.

Achieving a good likeness can work through grids and measuring and by using projectors but what is it in a face that is necessary to measure when caricaturists can produce someone’s character while seemingly flouting all those pieces of advice about proportion?

I have largely found my own way of getting a half-decent likeness through trial and error – a lot of error – and I’m not sure I’d be able to express any secret of it at this time in my career. Is it about getting the mouth right – often a source of problems for any of us who have drawn other humans? Is it the nose or shape of face or the relationship between all of these parts which you must create in proportion to one another in order to achieve a likeness? Who knows but thanks to a lot of online sessions now, some of which are free, you can practice drawing people without any stress and if you don’t get a likeness, move on to the next face. I embraced this online sketching with fervour during the lockdowns and afterwards and I hope to continue doing so into the future because there’s an indescribable feeling of gratitude to the universe when a face you draw tends to look like the person.

The images below were drawn from life in 10 to 90 minutes, and many of them, I’m proud and relieved to say, looked like themselves at the time of drawing.