Illustration: Amy Winehouse portrait

I, like many others, loved Amy’s music and thought she was groundbreaking when I first heard her voice and I had her album on my iPod on continuous repeat for some time on my work journeys. Then she vanished for a while and came back and looked completely different. I loved her second album but hated seeing the pain she was going through on a daily basis and I hoped so much that she would overcome her demons.

Just as it seemed she was defeating those demons she passed away and was gone too soon, far too soon – when I heard she had passed away I felt inspired to do a few portraits of her. I recently completed one which took over 35 hours to complete and it has been a popular piece on Facebook and will be selling a very limited amount of prints on our online store, Papermarks.co.uk.

This piece took over 30 hours to complete, I began work on it 26th July 2011 and completed it 29th July 2011. Since completing the piece I have made and sold a few prints from the online store and made contact with Amy’s father, Mitch Winehouse via his PA and donated the original to him to sell at auction – all proceeds going to the Amy Winehouse Foundation.