"I’m a painter who sits at home producing hundreds of drawings but rarely any finished canvases. My work is rather traditional, an attempt at recording bits of the world acutely and with as much detail as I can manage. You always hope that the thing you’re working on will somehow come alive in the end. Occasionally you finish a painting and there it is, so you move on, usually to something more difficult! Drawing, however, is easy. Like scratching your head but inside the skull. When drawing people, just make sure the head sits on the shoulders right, and that they're not grinning like a monkey.

I graduated from a three-year illustration course at Norwich University of the Arts in 2015. I remember quiet Sunday mornings up on Mousehold Heath. The sky was usually a hollow blue, the cathedral spire with it’s falcons prodding sharply at the greying clouds, which looked set to burst before I got back to the relative safety of my student squat. I thought about those memories whilst I did the drawing of Duncan Forbes, which was achieved using a fine black pen."

Words by Cover Artist, Samuel Gascoigne

To further celebrate this seasons Portrait of an Icon cover artwork, we've released print editions of every piece which are available to buy now from our online shop.