Lee Carsley

It struck me, watching the football the other night, that the England interim manager Lee Carsley would make a great portrait subject. His eyes are slightly close together and the irises look like tiny dots in there. It conveys a sense of vulnerability and it’s something that I wanted to have a go at replicating. I used coloured pencil and this one took a long time to complete – something like six and a half CDs. That’s how I measure time these days. And, as I was using coloured pencil, those CDs included a three disc Grateful Dead concert from 1970 to help me loosen up.

As usual, this one has multiple layers of colour everywhere, starting with really light pressure and with pressure only being increased as the tooth of the paper filled up and more pressure become necessary.

The background started with quite realistic colours and maybe a bit too tight, even though I was trying to make all shapes overlap each other along the edges in an attempt to blur things. After a while I was happy with the accuracy of what I had but not the looseness and blurriness. So with the help of the Grateful Dead, I picked out random primary and secondary colours and I jammed with them all over the background, ignoring whatever colour shapes were already there. And I added a final layer of light grey over the top. I ended up with something with blurred edges and faded semi-neutral colours with only hints of the true colours. Just what the doctor ordered.

For the face, I followed a methodology I’d seen on YouTube a couple of days ago. I started by putting down a darkish colour (nougat, just like in the video I saw) in all the dark areas, just to give me something to hang everything else off of. Then I reached for five green pencils and used these to colour in the five different values that I could see in the face. I did all this without using the Notanizer app to split the face into values. When I was finished, the green face looked really good. After that, the guy in the video just used flesh tones in the face. I started with flesh tones but soon moved onto reds, blues, yellows and secondary colours. Sometimes I added in the colours I thought I could see in the source photo; at other time I went for reds in the cheeks, gold in t( forehead and blues and greys in the chin, especially in Lee’s stubble.

There were lots of layers in Lee’s top but too many of these were monotone, resulting in a top that’s clearly a mixture of lots of colours but where the mixture is pretty uniform all over, except in the creases and shadows.

After I’d done all this, I stopped for the day. Looking at the painting through fresh eyes today, I added a single layer of grey over the background and another red over Lee’s top and then stopped as the tooth of the paper was full. I think Lee’s face was already full last night. To finish off, I needed to do some blending. I didn’t want to burnish the portrait and make it shiny and I didn’t want to use blender pens on what wasn’t smooth paper. That left me with two options and I used them both. I smoothed out the background and the microphone with paper stumps to keep them out of focus and then went over Lee’s face and top with pencil blending medium and a paintbrush. I thought that by using two different techniques I could get Lee to stand out against the background.

I think I’ve ended up with a pretty successful painting. There’s a likeness of sorts but it’s the vulnerability in the eyes that jumps off the page for me: just what I wanted to catch. But there’s also some defiance in the chin: a look that suggests Lee’s trying to hide his vulnerability. Nice. There was also at times a bit of Steve Clarke (Scotland manager) coming through. I’m not sure, though, whether it’s Steve’s likeness or his defiant personality that I can see. Who knows? I could state to this one for ages trying to work out what was going through the artist’s head. Lee’s up for sale.

And, before I go, a few words on Lee Carsley England Manager. I think Lee’s done a fantastic job in his six games in charge. He won our Nations League group. He introduced a bunch of new players, many of whom have fitted in and demonstrated their international class really quickly. Thomas Tuchel has only signed an 18 month contract, so will probably be 100% focused on the 2026 World Cup and not on bringing through the next generation of players to replace some of the older players, so it was really important that Lee used these matches to blood new talent. And Lee seems to have also injected more enthusiasm to some of England’s existing players: Grealish, Bowen, Gordon and Bellingham have never looked better for England and Kyle Walker, while past his peak, seems to have arrested his decline. Lee’s detractors generally beat him with one of two sticks. One is his after match interviews, which suggest to me that he could do with some media training. Very easy to sort out. And if he doesn’t get the training, is it that big a problem that he’s honest and genuine? The other thing is his team selection for the home game against Greece. Rather than England’s usual 4-2-3-1 formation, Lee went for 4-1-5-0 to squeeze in all five of England’s attacking midfield Galacticos. It didn’t work out. Some described it as a failed experiment but they’re obviously not scientists. A failed experiment is one from which you learn nothing. We might have lost the game but we learned that we need to stick with 4-2-3-1, so that was a successful experiment. I applaud Lee for taking the risk, experimenting and firmly closing the 4-1-5-0 door. And, of course, he still won the group despite losing that game. I’d like to see Lee back as manager after 2026. Make it happen FA!