Ahmed Aldoori is an amazing painter and is also great at getting his painting methodology across. I was catching up on his videos recently when I saw that I was about 14 months late to an interesting 100 heads challenge that he did a video about. I found it interesting because I’d been itching to get back into painting in colour and I really liked the way he played with the references:

• Not obsessing about accurate reproduction
• Feeling free to play and stylise
• Doing totally new colours if you feel like it

This matches my current mood of injecting more play into my work and also basing my play on references. Doing such a large number might make for an interesting and identifiable series for people to follow. His references are still up on Pinterest so if you are interested you can see how much I’ve messed with them, or not, in the painting process.

I do slightly regret not cropping these to squares before uploading these to Instagram. It’s funny. I knew that. Work-me knows that. Play-me is different person.