Tessie O'Shea Portrait

I generally prefer to paint portraits of men - their faces seem to have more 'character', from my artist's eye anyway. But there are exceptions of course. One is Tessie O'Shea. She was a true performer, with her effervescent and infectious character coming through in her face. If you watch an old video of her and turn down the sound, just looking at her face and theatrical posture is a 'show' in itself - big smile, big jewellery, big performance. What a star she was. And she could play a mean uke too!

Like the Formby portrait, I've tried to get a vibrancy in this painting of Tessie. I wanted to resist the temptation to add too much detail and clutter. Hayward Veal had an exercise where he would try to finish a painting within 10 minutes. This painting took longer than 10 minutes but I still tried to do it as quickly as I could as I feel that urgency and immediacy fits perfectly with the gusto of Tessie's performances.

George Formby Colour Portrait

I had a couple of books at Christmas so have been reading up on some of my favourite artists, Rolf Harris and his mentor, the Australian impressionist Hayward Veal, the 'vibrant acrylics' impressionist artist Hashim Akib, and the Austrian painter Voka.

I love impressionism and loose brush work and have been trying to incorporate ideas from all of these artists into my own work, particularly Voka. He describes his style as 'spontaneous realism', and brings 'immediacy, vigour and enthusiasm' into his paintings.

I've attempted to do that in this observation of George Formby, from his performance of 'I Wish I Was Back On The Farm' from the 1940 film 'Spare A Copper', using larger brushes and rich acrylic paint as much as possible.