He’s better known as an industry trainer – but the popular Julian O’Dell is a fantastic artist too.

Furthermore, thanks to the wonders of Twitter and Facebook, his pictures are doing sterling work raising money for a charity very close to his heart.

Julian’s wife Caterina, who like Julian was formerly a partner at Thomas Morris estate agents, has cancer and her husband is dedicated to raising as much as he can for Macmillan.

Julian specialises in pictures of well known people and his portraits so far include Johnny Cash, Debbie Harry, Mick Jagger and Sid Vicious.

“I currently have requests to catch up with for Freddie Mercury, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Page and others,” says Julian. “Not a bad way to spend a few hours by the pool while I’m currently away on holiday in France!”

Extraordinarily, Julian has only recently rediscovered his talent for sketching, after not having picked up a pencil for 25 years.

“My ‘new’ pastime began as a result of sitting bored in hotel rooms in the evening ahead of running training courses.

“Fed up with poor quality TV, I did a picture and put it on Facebook. A friend offered to buy it. I said he could have it for nothing but he insisted on paying, so I suggested a donation to Macmillan.

“He donated £30 and the germ of an idea was born.”

Julian leaves it up to the “buyer” to suggest their own price, asking them to donate whatever they think the picture is worth to them.

His originals sell for around £50, but he is now thinking of producing a few prints of the most popular ones, with the hope that the originals may fetch more.

Go on, EYE readers, get bidding here now by replying to tweets!

Donations can be made here