Kevin Cunningham - Portrait insights

I know some artists like to go straight to the canvas and start painting, but I like to know what the construction is. It means that I can go in more confident, with the paint effectively. This first thing I do before I go to the canvas is to get the construction of the composition. I don't like to scale it up using graphs or anything so I use my own eye, but this is my first thinking of how it's going to look, so it's not meant to be a good drawing. I like to do these little studies as well that I do when I'm with the people. They just give me a feel for the tone and colours. The more you get to know the painting before you come to it, the easier I find it is. I always think ‘get it down on paper’ then you know roughly ... and everything comes from that. I've always worked that way, I've even drawn on beer mats, whatever I find. Sometimes I lose quite a lot of the drawing that I've done, but I don't mind that. There's going to be lots going on in the background here, but I haven't even begun to draw that. I generally work up the faces and then probably do the hands and then I work the background with their clothing, but trying to keep it loose as well. And that's actually when I start to work on the likenesses. I don't worry too much about it looking like them at this point.