Gavin McDermott

Although I could give this the alternative title of Pictures of People I’m Reading Stuff By.

It was quite a thing to realise that some great writers actually discover what they’re thinking and what they know by doing —there’s even a ‘how I do it’ book Write to Learn by Don Murray which I rather enjoyed once when I was exploring memoir …which is so different from the English-taught-at-school version of planning before you start!

In a similar way I think I draw to know, and totally get the point made by Andrew Marr of drawing his children playing on the beach with buckets and spades being so much more powerful to capture the moment than a photo.

Anyway, in a looking-and-seeing equivalent, I think I learn from drawing (and looking at) faces. And I think I even learn from photos of faces too–although the landscape painter Mitchal Albala went strangely quiet when I asked him if he thought this was a valid move ;-)

For example, I was reading an article pitching for Invertebrate of the Year about the mighty Common Octopus by a marine biologist, and was sufficiently curious to look up and sketch the author, Helen Scales (Sorry Helen, it’s all a bit ready-fire-aim!)

Similarly, I was reading a book about Mountains by Robert Macfarlane , and so curious to see what he and some of his subjects looked like…

Obviously, there’s been an ongoing tsunami of anthropologists, most recently including facial reconstruction experts such as Natalie Murry and Caroline Wilkinson , and Bernard Wood for his Human Evolution writing, too.

Oh, and musicians (and producers): Conny Plank and Knut Reiersrud

And every now and again, I’m motivated to paint some of these faces bigger and a (tiny) bit more carefully, such as Curtis Marean