Shortly before all the Coronavirus closures I was lucky enough to see the David Hockney : Drawing from Life exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery in London which was such a treat and featured 150 of his drawings made throughout his life. I saw a previous show of his at the Tate back in 2017 but that was a different collection of works with not so much of a focus on portraits. I have a real admiration for those artists that specialise in portraits, particularly self-portraits. I can clearly remember ‘those’ exercises in my Art classes and let’s just say it was not my forte. I’m sure it is a skill that requires practice but I never had the patience and I was always drawn to a different sort of design but I have the utmost respect for those artists like Hockney that have absolutely ‘cracked it’. As this pencil self portrait of a 19 year old Hockney shows, even before he attended the Royal College of Art, his creative abilities were evident and he had clearly