A widower’s challenge to sketch a celebrity each day for a year is nearing completion after raising more than £3,000 for the hospice which cared for his late wife.

Andrew Mead vowed to draw 365 famous faces following wife Lucy’s death two years ago from kidney cancer.

She was treated at Hospice in the Weald at Pembury.

The 48-year-old has uploaded each of his pictures to social media to masses of support and compliments from his subjects.

Father-of-two Mr Mead, from Sevenoaks, said: “The idea is to get people to sponsor me like you would for a marathon and follow me through the year.

“In the first year since she died people did a lot of events in her name but I thought I wanted to do something different.”

Mr Mead, who stopped working to look after daughter Amy and son John, attended art classes at the Sevenoaks Adult Education Centre.

He began his project, dubbed “Help! I’m a Celebrity Stop Drawing Me”, on what would have been Lucy’s 48th birthday and chose to draw technology legend Steve Jobs while on a trip to California.

Mr Mead, who has raised £3,390 so far, said: “I have done 290 drawings and more than 100 of those have been requests so people have engaged with it.

“I have had Lord Sugar respond to say my drawing of him was very good.”

The 365 portraits planned by Mr Mead will be completed on July 22 and all money raised will make its way to the Hospice in the Weald.

Mr Mead, of Hitchen Hatch Lane, said: “The hospice was something I had never come across before.

“The hospice came and saw us early on and it was about a year before she died.

“Throughout that year they were so supportive. My wife was given counselling by them once a week as she found it hard because her father died from cancer in his 40s as well.

“I don’t think people realise what they do outside of the hospice itself.”

To sponsor Mr Mead and donate to the Hospice in the Weald click here