Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton is an American painter who is best known for portraits of her close friends and boyfriends. Her celebrations of youth, beauty and fame are note table for their brilliant colour and graphic sense. She has also got celebrity subjects included in her work such as David Bowie, Kanye West, Keith Richards, John Lennon and members of the Kennedy family.

This is her drawing of Keith Richards:

She has really achieved the life like quality in her work as she has captured all of his facial features without going into much detail, yet keeping very accurate shading for the shadows and light. She hasn't tightened up on the details and has let it loose quite a bit. I really like how she has drawn his eyes as they look really effective and I would love to learn from this as my eyes don't look as realistic or as good as these do. She hasn't spent loads of time on it as the lines are quite rushed but that shows how she observes him and isn't over-working herself. Although I haven't done anything like this with colour yet, she keeps the colour palette very limited. She might have done this in order not to take attention away from the simplistic features on him ,like his face and joints. I need to work on my work to make it more three dimensional like Peyton's work.

Here are more examples of her work:

Jackie and John Kennedy