Wilfrid Wood
After dumping a career in graphics, Wilfrid plunged into prop making at cult classic British television show, Spitting Image. Here he learnt his trade as an ‘apprentice headbuilder’, starting in the Eyeballs and Blinks department and moving on to Dogs and Sheep.
25 years later he is now a portrait artist. His subjects are famous people, invented characters, strangers and friends. He spends hours studying characters in the supermarket, on the bus and in celebrity magazines. Wilfrid is commissioned to make both sculpted and drawn portraits, regularly drawing people from life in his Hackney studio.
Currently he is engaged in a series of pastel portraits, mainly of curious individuals who have made contact through Instagram and volunteered their time.
Talk: Headbuilder
What makes a good portrait? Do portraits often say more about the artist than the sitter? What kind of face is good to do? What can you tell about someone’s personality from their face? I’ll be talking about my time at cult TV show Spitting Image, boring jobs that pay, interesting jobs that don’t, plus drawing people every day at my flat in Hackney.
