Kate Middleton...

I was recently approached by the guys at the Daily Telegraph Magazine with the possibility of doing a portrait of Kate Middleton for an upcoming feature. Everything was a little shaky as it needed to not only get approval from the nice chaps at the magazine but also by the big guys on the Telegraph itself, as this was the first attempt at having an illustrated cover (and to my mind- also of impending royalty) i wasnt holding out much hope that it would get in.

I really had no brief, just to produce a good likeness / portrait of Kate and to bear in mind the usual constraints of editorial work- room for copy!



My first piece came out really well (i thought), i wanted to try and get her hair up off her shoulders- shes always photographed with her hair down and i wanted to move away from any preconceived views. Although (minus a couple of small edits) this was sounding pretty good- when it came to the big meeting the fact her hair wasnt down- was actually a problem and she needed to be more identifiable! So back in with long hair! Fortunately the rest of the image was good so i was able to salvage the facial portrait and edit everything else. When i got a quick mockup of the cover it became evident that it needed something else in the background, a right to left diagonal which darkened the top left for the type to appear as knockout fitted the bill nicely!

Many thanks to Gary Cochran at the Telegraph for commissioning this piece via CIA and for pushing to get an illustration onto the cover of the Telegraph Magazine, with any luck this will get some good feedback and allow a few more through!

Heres the final portrait, closeup details and a quick shot of the cover (she got scaled up a bit on the cover!)