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Artist paints watercolour portraits in 10 minutes

BBC Radio Berkshire presenter Kirsten O'Brien had her portrait painted by Helen Ridley

An artist from Reading who can create a portrait in 10 minutes has said the key is to try to paint faster than the speed of thought.

Helen Ridley is a "live illustrator", and goes to weddings and other events creating watercolour paintings at high speed.

She started an online portrait business in 2020, before moving on to paint people face-to-face.

On Thursday she stopped by the BBC Radio Berkshire office and demonstrated her skills by painting presenter Kirsten O'Brien's portrait live on air.

FAYE HEDGES PHOTOGRAPHY A promotional picture of one of Helen Ridley's sketches: a bride and groom at their wedding painted in a colourful watercolour style with pens, scissors and tape pictured around the paper.FAYE HEDGES PHOTOGRAPHY
Helen said was fun to see people's reactions to the portraits she paints at weddings

Ms Ridley said: "The quicker I work, the better I am at getting a likeness, weirdly. It's almost the less you think about it, the better."

She said she trained in fashion illustration, but became disillusioned with the rigid style.

"That [style] is usually a very elongated and skinny figure," she said. "There are some illustrators who use templates of skinny people.

"I try to be very inclusive and not use templates. The adrenaline of having to draw from scratch is half the fun."

In the past month she has even been doing live portraits of people's pets in her local John Lewis.

But said painting dogs in shops does come with its challenges.

"With the dog portraits I take a quick photo, because you are not going to get a dog to sit still for five minutes," she said.

"But I've got really good at getting a likeness of dogs really quickly."

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