Me at home, the night I finished my Lewis portrait in October 2008, 6 days before he won the F1 Drivers Title

I am a F1 nut. All those who know and love me will tell you that, other than my dog, there is NOTHING in the world I love more than Formula 1.

Now it is not that I am a huge Lewis fan as may be assumed by this picture, more that I have been a fan of Ron Dennis, C.E.O and team boss of McLaren (well, he was when I made this picture!) for many years. I have suffered and celebrated with the team and my hero, good times and bad. So after attending the British Grand Prix, two days before my graduation in July 2008, Lewis looked like he could win the title. I worked out that if I started right away, I could probably get a portrait done before the end of the season. It had been 9 years since McLaren had won anything, and there was nothing I wanted more than Lewis to win it for "Uncle Ron", as I like to refer to him.

For anyone thinking that I jumped on the Lewis Mania thing, there are pictures of me on my blog, at Spa 2004 and Silverstone 2006 clearly donning McLaren T shirts and flags, before Lewis drove for them.

Having taken on board the "what not to dos" on my first picture, I set about making Lewis. This time I wanted to take the optical mixing even further, and really mix up the colours of the skin so they were completely wrong when close up. I wanted to give the viewer different experiences. In In Seine you had two; firstly that it was a picture of Le Grande Jatte in Paris, and secondly, when you got close up, that it was made of dots. With Lewis, when you get close up you have the added experience that the colours seem all wrong, and only blend as you walk away.

 

 

 

The grass on In Seine is made up of green dots	Clearly, on the Lewis Portrait the skin is made up of many colours

Clearly you can see that there had been in a move forward in my technique, learning how to optically mix the colours on Lewis was a huge step. Each picture I make is a learning experience.

After completing Lewis there was much media interest in this piece of work, with it appearing on the BBC News Northwest and Local and National Newspapers. Eventually it appeared on websites globally, leading countries from around the world to take an interest in my work.

 

On February the 6th 2009, I was kindly invited to the McLaren Technology Centre by Ron Dennis himself. Mr Dennis had been a hero of mine for many years. I got to see all the cars and trophies of my past driving heroes and had the best day of my life. You know you dream of things, and when you get there it can be a huge dissapointment? Well for me it was not. Mr Dennis was exactly like I thought he would be, he didn't let me down, and I would like to thank him for making this girl's dream come true (and also teaching me to say Heikki Kovalainen's name properly!).


Yes Mr Dennis, I need a haircut, I did stick all these dots one by one, and I'm not crazy, honest!