With a little help from my friends

How the Beatles’ contrasting artistic styles came together

PAUL MCCARTNEY

Mccartney explored experimental cinema and became acquainted with London’s avant garde art scene via dealer Robert Fraser, through whom he met Andy Warhol. He took up painting in 1983 and exhibited portraits of Lennon, Warhol and David Bowie in Germany in 1999. Mccartney said he kept his painting secret, but after a Liverpool exhibition he said he was “out of the closet”.

JOHN LENNON

Lennon described art as his first love. He studied art at the Liverpool Art Institute and went on to produce lithographs depicting scenes from his honeymoon with Yoko Ono. He also gave Ono a series of erotic pictures a wedding gift. He kept sketch books, and many works have been published by Ono including line drawings of himself, his family and the natural world.

RINGO STARR

Starr has caused controversy for his artwork made from MS Paint, which he began toying with in the late 1990s to kill time on the road. Pop International Galleries in New York, hosted an exhibition of his work in 2005. The paintings show crude childlike images. “The easy way to look at it is, if it has a hat on – it will probably be called Hat Man,” Starr has said.

GEORGE HARRISON

Harrison did not appear to have a great interest in art, although there are elaborate touches to the way he restored his English manor house and grounds in Henley-on-thames. Harrison said he saw gardening as a form of escapism: “Sometimes I feel like I’m actually on the wrong planet, and it’s great when I’m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think: ‘What the hell am I doing here?”