This painting comes from a mono-print, which in turn comes from...which just appeared on the page, in fact. It is difficult to translate mono-prints into paintings because what works in black and white marks doesn't always work in colour. I am always trying to encompass a small amount of realism along with the stylised decorative marks. This painting gave me a chance to enjoy the textures you can make with gouache paint, too.

I started with the word at the top, done with a set of printing letters. Then I covered the whole page with lemon yellow gouache, and drew the faces with the flat end of a crayon. The rest was a mix of gouache and acrylic and crayon. It's strange that it looks simple and childish but it actually felt like hard work when I was doing it. That's an interesting phenomenon to think about sometime...

Many ideas come when I sit down with a piece of paper in front of me, pick up a felt-tip pen or a crayon, and make a first mark. For some reason, the first shape is almost always an oval for a face, and then the rest of the picture sort of spools itself across the page. As I go along, I listen and respond to impulses to use ink and a brush, colour, and various motifs.