Sara Lavelle ran a relaxed portraiture workshop as part of future selves. I drew a portrait of Bethan, and also two characters one of her and the other me. It was really fun to try drawing people because I often leave faces blank, and they are rarely the focal point of my drawings.

Portraits reflect both the artist and subject, and the artist is very much a core part of the portrait. Self-portraits are subjective to the artist’s perception of themselves. I always shy away from drawing faces, especially of friends but this could be partly because I am scared to make them strange or offending them.

This workshop has inspired me to draw other people more. I think this will help me with ideas to explore and explain my non-binary gender identity in my self directed project. I want to look at other portrait artists and explore different ways to draw and paint people.

Sara Lavelle is fascinated by human psychology, philosophy and spirituality, and her work has a predominant focus on portrait painting and figuration. She found it interesting that I want to focus on gender identity for my project, and mentioned how when she was in Minnesota for a semester at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (during her degree at Brighton) she noticed it was much more common to introduce with pronouns and she felt that there were possibly more non-binary artists in America.