Like most children, my earliest artistic attempts were portraits of myself.

Every child does this - it’s the first, instinctive act of saying "I exist". As we grow, our subjects expand, but the human face remains a steady companion in visual art.

One of my drawings presented here is of a professor of Iranian languages. 

I drew him in a university library, completely absorbed in a book, his favourite pastime. He sits so still when he reads that the pages reflect clearly in his glasses. He’s a thoughtful man, always ready to listen, though not easily swayed by weak arguments or fashionable opinions.

Cambridge once had many such characters roaming its streets. With research shifting toward collaboration, and science overshadowing the arts and humanities, you might imagine him a relic from another age. Not so. Many scientists here still shut the lab door at 5pm and transform into literary critics by night.

I once joked with a doctor at the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research that he had a Jekyll-and-Hyde intellect. He adored the idea. At six o’clock, he claimed, his “transmogrification” would begin: nails sharpening, facial hair sprouting, all promptly tamed by his personal manicurist. I drew a cartoon for him. I wish I still had it, but he took it home with him, thousands of miles away.

These lighthearted moments sit alongside something more solemn, the quiet craft of creating a likeness that feels true. A good portrait holds a person’s essence; a poor one may be accurate but empty. At art school in Newport, a tutor once told me that capturing character in a serious portrait is easier than doing so in a cartoon. I’m still not sure. Decades later, I continue to wonder. What do readers think? In a future post, I’ll share cartoons of both sitters so you can vote on the theory.

For now, I’ll share a different portrait. 

She is a professional life model, calm, still, and quietly radiant. Like the professor, she can hold a pose for astonishing lengths of time. Her heritage lies in the Celtic north: the Western Isles, the Giants’ Causeway, seas and skies thick with weather. She often composes poetry while modelling; sometimes her lips move ever so slightly, as though shaping silent stanzas.

Tall, long-limbed, and brave, she carries the mark of a mastectomy with quiet dignity. It was her scar, along with her poetry and her affinity with the northern coast, that seeded a series of thoughts about real mermaids, not the glossy creatures who preen on rocks and chase princes, but women shaped by tides, resilience, and weather. More J.K. Rowling’s gritty beings than Walt Disney’s delicate nymphs.

These faces, the professor, the poet-model, are reminders that portraiture is never just about resemblance. It is about the inner weather of a person, caught for a moment on paper.