One of Britain's leading portrait artists has turned Dulwich Picture Gallery into his own studio and visitors can watch him at work. Humphrey Ocean, famed for his portraits of Tony Benn and Philip Larkin, will be available to the public in the Linbury Room of the gallery every Friday until the end of the month while he works.

The artist told Leisuretime how he gets the best from his subjects: "The first sitting is very important from the point of view of the subject because they've got to feel like they want to come back."

Each painting takes anywhere between three and six months to complete.

"Some people are very nervous but I don't like to contrive a situation. I don't ask people to wear certain clothes or act in a certain way. I don't fake it up, I prefer a sort of verit."

But do the paintings convey how the subject wants to appear or how Ocean perceives them?

"I'm not conscious of either. I just try to paint them as I see them. There is this idea you can capture a person's soul on canvass, which is just for the birds! The painter responds to something he sees and likes. I've no idea what the subject wants and they don't either."

Other contemporary portrait artists have been in the spotlight lately, including Lucien Freud who produced controversial partly-abstract portrait of the Queen.

Ocean said: "The portrait of the Queen does not seem as intimate as Freud's portrait of his own mother, most likely because he is more familiar with the latter. The painting is very much his own and an individual interpretation shines through. I was very impressed the Queen actually sat and posed for Freud."

The artist's other claim to fame is that he was in Ian Dury's first rock band, The Kilburn High Roads.

He said: "Ian actually taught me to paint at art school and, along with some other students, we formed this band. Ian found he had a talent with words and could entertain people so he pursued a career in music rather than art."

The pictures Ocean will be working on at the studio which has been created for him in the gallery are incomplete or even just at the ideas stage and the finished pictures will be displayed at Dulwich from January to September next year. In the meantime, any member of the public can go along to probe this talkative and knowledgeable artist's mind.

- Humphrey Ocean, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, Fridays to Aug 30, 10am-5pm, free, 020 8693 5354.