The Billy no-mates who is now painting the stars

His art has been praised by Leonardo Di Caprio, he’s rubbed shoulders with Tom Hanks, and has painted impresario Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Artist Alan Hydes has painted his own career canvas that has taken him from sketching scenes on Yorkshire farms as a youngster to painting superstars from his Spanish home.

“It’s my passion and people are wanting to pay me decent money for the pictures I’m painting and it’s not working for a living it’s just doing something that I love. I’m just so fortunate that I can make a living from it,” he said.

Alan was born and raised in Leeds and later moved to Kilham where he attended primary school and he first got into painting aged eight when his older sister taught him to draw.

He said: “She encouraged me to draw because I was Billy no-mates in Kilham – I didn’t know anybody and the nearest farm was around 20 miles away, so I was literally Billy no-mates with a dog.

“Then I got a sketch pad and wandered around doing drawings of anything to do with Yorkshire, farmers and all that. At eight years old I really started my artistic career by fluke – if I had grown up in Leeds I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

He then went to Driffield School, Scarborough School of Art and was awarded a first class honours degree in art from Birmingham College of Art.

After graduating, the aspiring painter drove himself through Afghanistan and Pakistan, all the way to India and spent 18 months studying there.

“I was very keen on Indian miniature painting so I got my inspiration from India because of all the colour and light and that’s what really started me, I sold my pictures when I got back.”

Later, he was commissioned by the University of Bradford to paint life size portraits of two university professors which can now be seen in the permanent collection there. But it was whilst he was lecturing at Leeds College of Art that his career really sprung to life.

Alan was approached by Yorkshire TV to do a televised series where he would paint the portraits of famous people from the area. The show, Painting the Stars, saw Hydes paint portraits of Sir Edward Heath, Jilly Cooper, Robert Palmer, Lord Harewood, David O’Leary and many other local characters.   

Though he has painted everything from nudes to abstracts, his main focus has always been on portraiture, with a particular fondness for people “who’ve got a face that’s been lived in, you know, like an old boot!”.

Alan Hydes with Leonardo Di Caprio

“Once I could get things in proportion and get things right, I had a lot of confidence in my drawing and then I could bring out the character in people,

“The whole thing with portraiture is that really you can’t just do a photographic likeness, you need to actually capture the inherent likeness of the person and I found that I could do that with all the local farmers because they were such characters.”

“A portrait tries to get inside the soul of the person and looks for what’s coming out the person’s face, how interesting they are is shown in their eyes and the eyes are the door to the soul. So if you can get the eyes right, you can sometimes capture people almost living.”

Alan now lives in the small coastal village of Deia, in Mallorca, painting local women nude, translating famous faces onto canvases and tending to his waiting list of art collectors.

After being impressed by his portraits at an exhibition in Deia, Andrew Lloyd Webber himself even commissioned the artist to paint a life-size portrait.

“He came up to me and asked if he could buy me a drink as he was new to the village,” said Alan. “He’s got such an interesting face, he really has got a lot going on in his face and I really enjoyed it because he was a challenge to paint.”

To see more of Alan’s artwork, click here.