This portrait was made by British artist Jo Brocklehurst in London, in the UK, in 1981. It’s drawn on a rectangular piece of slightly off-white paper. It’s quite big: the paper’s longest side is 84 centimetres, about the length of a full-sized umbrella. Two people are drawn in a scarlet red and dark blue outline, with some areas of filled-in colour. Only the people are drawn, they are floating in empty space, without any background details and are looking intently at each other.

The person on the left is Val Drayton; the person on the right is Lou Challice. Val is lying horizontally on their right side with their body running from the left side of the paper into the centre. Their right arm is bent and their hand is propping up their head. Their long hair is fanning out in all directions like a firework. The strands are drawn in lines of pastel that are densely packed together to create a bold oval of colour with a feathered edge. The hair around their right hand and in front of their face is bright red and pink, the hair towards the top is mid-blue. Under their hair, Val’s face is in profile, with their gaze on Lou’s face. Val’s eye is drawn in a navy blue line with heavy red eyeshadow. They have a red line across their cheek and bright red lipstick on their pursed lips. Below their chin, on their collarbone, is a small red star.

Val’s upper body slopes down towards the centre of the drawing, then their hip curves upwards in the centre. They are wearing a v-neck sleeveless white vest with the word ‘Adolescents’ written across the chest in red, with a lime green patch above and a dark blue patch below. Around the bottom of their waist is a wide studded belt, drawn with a blue outline. Val is wearing a short pleated red skirt, with leggings or tights in the same red. The skirt and tights are coloured in: an area of bold red in the centre of the drawing. Val’s knee is bent towards us, resting on Lou’s lap. Lou’s left hand curves around Val’s bent knee, and is holding a cigarette too. Val’s left arm reaches diagonally in front of their body so their left hand rests on Lou’s right thigh, meeting Lou’s left hand.

Lou is sitting upright on the right side of the drawing. Their hair is cropped by the top edge of the paper. Their lower leg is cropped by the bottom edge. They are sitting with their knees bent at a 90-degree angle, as though on a ledge or a chair, but the seat is not drawn in. Their body is at a three-quarter angle to us, facing into the centre, towards Val.

Lou is wearing a knee-length pleated skirt, drawn with dense lines of navy-blue pastel. Underneath they are wearing dark pink leggings or tights, that are an area of block colour. The skirt covers their lap and the side of their left thigh, but a triangular patch of pink is exposed at the top of their leg.

Lou’s body is slightly hunched forwards. They are wearing a short-sleeved white t-shirt with the words ‘Vev Le Rock’ written in pale blue letters running diagonally across the chest. The neck of the t-shirt is slashed, and above is Lou’s collarbone, drawn with a deep pink line.

Lou’s hair is shorter than Val’s, but also sprays out in all directions, drawn with lines of dark blue and purple pastel, with some scarlet red lines behind. Lou’s gaze is meeting Val’s. Lou also has bright red makeup lining their eyes. They are wearing red lipstick, and their mouth is closed and curved upwards into a slight smile.

Beneath Lou in the bottom-right corner is a signature in red capital letters: ‘BROCKLEHURST’, and a date: ‘1981’.

Jo Brocklehurst often signed her work with just her surname, and sometimes spelled her name ‘J.O.E.’, trying to avoid gendered interpretations of her work. Brocklehurst started her career as a fashion illustrator, but later dedicated her life to drawing portraits of free-spirited people. In the 1970s and 80s she took a shopping trolley filled with rolls of paper and pastels into London nightclubs where she drew New Romantic clubgoers. Even in these darkened spaces, she often drew wearing one, or even two, pairs of sunglasses.

For most of her life Brocklehurst lived in an artist’s studio in West Hampstead. In the early 1980s, members of the anarcho-punk Puppy Collective were squatting a building on the same street. Many sat as models in Brocklehurst’s studio and she made several portraits, including this one. Some said that Brocklehurst made them look like “warriors”. She said of them “I felt that they understood very well what was going on in the world and what was in it for them”.