I’m one of the speakers at the next Birmingham Salon on 22 February. It’s about the 18th century Enlightenment and the role of salons. The Lunar Society was a sort of salon, so am showing slides about The Book (the image is Bharat Patel’s wonderful frontispiece) and the Lunar Society and 18th-century Birmingham. Along with someone talking about love and radical dialogue in the 18th century; so goodness knows how it will turn out. But hopefully the Brum Salon will lay on apples and pencils and bottles of water again. A nice touch I feel.

BTW here’s two portrait commissions from late last year. Favorite portrait-from-photos though is the safari one from a year ago - these things are much more fun to draw if there’s time to invent a background and stick people in it