Female Icon Portrait Workshop

Over the last year I have been getting more and more into drawing portraits. It’s so much fun, it makes me laugh a lot when I get faces a bit wrong and they end up looking like someone else (accidental Steve Wright instead of Jeff Goldblum was a highlight). I really wanted to get involved with 16 Days of Street Art Action in December, it’s a project about feminism which runs alongside the international campaign ‘16 Days of Action to End Violence Against Women’.
During the campaign 16 pieces of street art created by 16 women from across the North West appeared in Manchester city centre depicting unsung female icons of past and present. Sadly, my chosen female icon, Frida Kahlo, had already been taken, so I didn’t get to paint a mural, but I did go along to the pen and ink workshop to make some little playing card sized portraits of top women Iris Apfel and Dolly Parton! If you’ve never heard of Iris Apfel, I urge you to watch the film about her, Iris, and also Fabulous Fashionistas. So inspiring! I really enjoyed the workshop, it was so nice to switch my brain off from stress and worry and sit with some lovely women making art. I am realising how important making art is to my mental health. The dotwork drawings are challenging and soothing to my frazzled brain. When I step back from them, I feel very calm.