The secrets behind André Carrilho's Independent on Sunday caricatures

How has our ace caricaturist André Carrilho captured the essence of subjects as varied as Amy Winehouse and Margaret Thatcher? Here, he reveals the colourful tricks of his trade

US businessman and presidential contender Donald Trump (© André Carrilho)

Under the circumstances, it's probably safe to let you into a secret. It concerns André Carrilho, our caricaturist, who for 13 years has been an integral part of the look and feel of The Independent on Sunday. His illustrations are immediately recognisable, subtly yet definitively capturing the spirit of whomever he happens to be portraying. His subjects have ranged from Maggie Smith and Amy Winehouse to Billy Bragg and Mark Rylance. All very particular figures in the British news landscape.

Yet Carrilho is at one remove from all of this. He was born and lives in Lisbon with his partner, Elga, and their three-month-old daughter, Maia. It makes his grasp of the nuances of someone such as Rylance all the more impressive. "I had never heard of or seen him before," Carrilho says of the actor, who recently won an Academy Award. "So I just had to do my best. But then I watched him in Bridge of Spies, went back to the drawing and thought, hmm, not bad."

Carrilho's relationship with The Independent on Sunday dates back to 2003, when he was spotted by the newspaper's then-art director, Carolyn Roberts. He was just 28, and had recently won an award at the Society for News Design's annual awards ceremony in America, where Roberts was on the jury. She commissioned him for The Independent on Sunday's new arts and culture magazine, Talk of the Town. It was Carrilho's big break, and he has remained steadfastly loyal to the title ever since, though his work now also appears in Vanity Fair, The New York Times and many other titles around the world.

For a time, he had wanted to be an architect, "but then I discovered graphic design, and then I just started illustrating". He likes the meritocratic nature of his profession: "Nobody is interested in whether I have a degree. They just want to see the work; if it's good enough, they use it."

And what of the creative process itself? Many people assume Carrilho's illustrations are done solely on a computer, or are distorted photographs. In fact, he produces a line drawing, then adds colours using Photoshop. "Sometimes I use photographic samples for the background, but it's all drawn by hand, then I use the computer to enhance it," he explains.

The most important thing about a caricature, he says, is that it must be instantly recognisable. "It's an art where no debate is possible," he says. "Not like a Picasso, which you can debate and explain." His personal favourite was Peter O'Toole, whom he found difficult to capture. "I was still a bit green, and I noticed that his face had changed between doing Lawrence of Arabia and The Last Emperor. That was when I realised my job was to do the sum of all the faces he has had in his life, to find a face that everyone recognised but in reality doesn't exist, because it's a composite memory of him." Which he can now do with anyone – even Mark Rylance.

For more: andrecarrilho.com