Why Tourists Still Crave Hand-Drawn Portraits in the Age of AI

It is a slightly strange thing when you think about it. We now live in a world where somebody can type a few words into an AI image generator and produce a flawless portrait in seconds, yet every week at Portobello Road Market people still stop to be drawn by hand.

And its not just art lovers either. Couples. Groups. Fashionistas or just the curious. People who, like everyone these days spend lot of their time online, still gather around an artist, to watch them draw and eagerley anticipating the outcome.

I think part of the reason is that what they are buying is not really just a picture of themselves. They are buying a moment that encapsulates their day in London.

Portobello Markethas always had a unique atmosphere. Unlike a sterile shopping mall, It is ramshackle, layered, slightly chaotic, full of wandering people, music, market traders, old signs, vintage clothes, overheard conversations and unexpected characters. There is still something bohemian lingering in the air there, despite all the changes London has gone through.

When somebody poses for a portrait in that environment, the drawing absorbs some of the feeling of the place itself. It becomes more than a souvenir. It becomes evidence that they were there, inside that strange little West London street theatre for an hour or two.

A lot of tourists today seem hungry for experiences that feel genuinely different. Not mass-produced tat. Not something copied a thousand times over in a factory or generated endlessly online. Something with a bit of unpredictability and soul to it. And live drawing has unpredictability built into it.

People react in all sorts of ways while they are being sketched. Some suddenly sit up straighter and pose as though they are on a fashion shoot. Others are naturally more shy and self-conscious. There is usually laughter, conversation and a kind of suspense while the drawing slowly comes together. Quite often they start asking questions about my work or about illustration itself and become creatively energised by the whole interaction.

That is something AI cannot really reproduce. AI can generate an outcome, but it cannot recreate the feeling of being involved in the creation of something.

When people pose for a portrait and see it revealed in real time, they become part of the process. It almost becomes a collaboration. They are not passively consuming an image. They are participating in something.

I think people are craving that more and more because so much of modern life now happens through screens. Everything is instant, frictionless and endlessly reproducible. A hand-drawn portrait feels completely different. It is slow enough that you notice it being made. It is physical. Analogue. You can see the brush marks, the slight imperfections, the decisions and accidents. Ironically, those imperfections are often what make it feel valuable.

AI imagery can be slick and technically impressive, but very often it also feels hollow. It has no real memory attached to it. No atmosphere. No sense of occasion. A hand-drawn portrait carries traces of an actual afternoon somewhere in the world. The slightly loose line or spontaneous splash of colour becomes part of the memory itself.

Some of my favourite reactions are when people see beauty in themselves that they were not expecting. Not in a filtered Instagram sense, but something softer and more human. Sometimes they look genuinely moved, as though they are seeing themselves through somebody else’s eyes for a moment. Those reactions are priceless because they remind you that drawing is not just about likeness. It is about observation and interpretation.

Tourists often arrive at Portobello looking for something memorable and leave carrying a portrait that feels tied to the atmosphere of that particular day. Years later I hope they look at it and remember the feeling of wandering around West London, discovering something unexpected and taking part in a small creative moment they could never quite have planned for.

Maybe that is why live drawing still survives so comfortably alongside all this new technology. However advanced the digital world becomes, there is still something satisfying about sitting down, chatting to another human being and watching a piece of paper slowly turn into something personal.

— Woody Hegedus
Live Event Illustrator London
Woody Is Drawing
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Instagram – @woodyisdrawing