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Here’s a double portrait of my friend with his son, out of the streets of North London, in those heady days when you were allowed out.

This is A3 and drawn with Mitsubishi Hi-uni pencils on Daler-Rowney smooth heavyweight cartridge paper, which is my preferred paper for portraits. There’s a little texture which helps with getting some vibrancy from the hatching but it’s smooth enough to be able to draw important details.

I did have a brief flirtation with the idea of using some different, and cheaper, pencils than the Hi-unis. They are a bit of an indulgence really. I spend half an hour playing around with a variety of other pencils, many of which are quite wonderful, but ended up buying a couple of dozen more Hi-unis. They are just so lovely to use.