In the "Leadership for Learning" project we have collaborated with participating schools in writing an initial portrait of each school. Based on official descriptions and interviews with stakeholders in the developmental process we have constructed a narrative or a portrait of the school's and stakeholders' conceptions of learning and leadership and the relations between those phenomena. The portrait is being kept up to date through researchers' field notes and reflections and supplementary interviews with stakeholders. In this way the initial portrait is being transformed into "animated images" and is thus becoming a very important link between the schools and the researchers/critical friends. It provides an important narrative of the learning processes going on. At the same time, it acts as an "irritation" in schools' and researchers' learning processes. While the initial portraits tended to be largely descriptive, some schools, with support from their critical friends, opted for a more analytical view of their school, for example a critique of their current practice with regard to leadership for learning. These more analytical and self-critical portraits are helping to model the form of reporting that we might expect to see from schools as they progress in their thinking.