Jenson Button

I know from experience I can procrastinate for a very long time over a drawing I'm not enjoying so rather than put off the Yorkie drawing, I got on with this one instead. Jenson Button is looking almost certain to become the next Formula One world champion. I haven't switched allegiance, I'm still rooting for Lewis Hamilton, but I just liked the angle of his face here.

This was done on the first page of my new square format brown sketchbook (photo here) and if anything the paper is even more unforgiving than the smaller Paperchase ones I've been using. The surface breaks up so easily it's almost impossible to erase anything once the colour is down. Normally I try out a couple of colours in the background but this time I had to stick with the blue. He's this year's 'blue eyed boy' so I guess it's appropriate.

The face is mostly Lyra Rembrandt Medium Flesh and Venetian Red with Luminance White for the highlights and a lot of Polychromos Burnt Ochre too. Initially I started this and put it away for a day but when I came back to it it looked so pale and insipid I got the Venetian Red and really scrubbed it on and it improved instantly. I used a Luminance Black for the darkest areas as that covers really well. Real F1 fans will notice the cap isn't right but I wanted to keep that as simple as possible.