The eight-year-old boy stares at his subject intently across the table. His eyes take in her cheekbones, chin, neckline, nose as he begins to sketch her face. When the sitter breaks into a smile, he observes and proceeds to draw more lines around the mouth.
Young artist Kenny Lau Kin-gi has warmed up since the visitor's arrival. His six-year-old brother, Eugene Lau You-gi - also a budding artist - is more forthright, but Kenny is now coming into his own. He bustles around the familiar territory of his parents' studio in Mong Kok, where other students on a Sunday morning quietly paint landscapes, architecture and nature at a neighbouring table.
"I like painting watercolours the most," Kenny says. But he enjoys all methods and also messing about with his parents - both artists - with materials to create different textures on his paintings. "Sometimes we can spray ink or use sea salt."
"We need to learn what is good from the traditional methods but also need to explore new methods," says his mother Iris Lee Chui-fan.
One of Kenny's works, Wonderful Hong Kong in oil pastels, went under the hammer at the South China Morning Post Charity Art Auction last month and fetched HK$95,000. The piece is a vibrant depiction of the waterfront with a bendy, green Star Ferry in the foreground.
Kenny has won more than 60 international prizes for his art. He first held a paintbrush at the age of one, could create lines and squares by two, and at four created over one summer a series of paintings for Ocean Park, that were auctioned by Sotheby's. His fish and animals have long been a feature of Ocean Park, where Kenny is the theme park's Conservation Fund's youngest ambassador.