Review: The Final of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018

Last night was The Final of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - and this is a review of the programme and the decision.

The Final Portraits painted in 4 hours.

My guess as to who would win proved correct. The question up for discussion - in this post and any comments you might like to add - is whether or not the decision was justified.

What follows is my response to what we saw in the episode - in terms of

• the painting of Emili Sande, 
• the three portrait commissions - and finally
• what happened in terms of the decision-making.

Before the start - the set-ups for
(left to right) Danny Howes, Samira Addo and Hetty Lawlor

The Final Portraits - at the National Portrait Gallery

I think the three finalists were incredibly fortunate in having Emili Sande as their subject. She's got a "good head" and was incredibly still for four hours.

I made notes while watching.

• they all took photos as reference
• both Danny and Samira gridded up - the latter for the first time. 
• Hetty just stuck to her routine of starting with the eyes and getting those right and working out from there, measuring by eye as she went.
• Danny used a grid because he upped his normal size and used the photo and the grid to get the drawing placed on the canvas - and then painted from life
• Samira worried about using the grid as it seemed to throw out her timings. She looked quite tense and troubled by time.

In terms of who produced the best portrait - in Emili Sande's view it was Hetty.

I liked the portraits produced by both Hetty (best likeness) and Danny - some lovely painting of skin tones, which is clearly something he is very good at.

For me Samira seemed somewhat stressed having changed her normal way of working and while she definitely pulled it back towards the end, for me it wasn't one of her better paintings - although better than the one she produced for the semi-final where it was absolutely impossible to tell who the sitters actually were.

Hetty's drawing (in coloured pencils and acrylic) of Emili Sande

Danny Howes painting of Emili - the largest painting and 'head'

Samira's painting of Emili

The other artists

There were a dozen artists working from a video of Emili Sande in a nearby room - with the winner promised a pass to the next series. To be honest, I wasn't impressed by most of what I saw. It occurred to me that these might be the reserve painters who could fill in at the last minute at a Heat if somebody dropped out or got sick. I could be wrong....

The winner in the sideshow turned out to be a female Army helicopter pilot called Hannah Shergold who produced a large and very colourful painting using palette knives (and has an interesting website! Turns out she is a a fully qualified Lynx helicopter commander who has served all over the world including Canada, Kenya, Germany and Afghanistan.)

The Commissions

I wish they'd given more time to the Commissions. If the decision is supposed to be based on both why not give them equal time?

• Danny Howes painted Sir Kenneth Grange for The Design Museum (the man who designed any number of iconic products)
• Samira Addo painted Zandra Rhodes, the fashion designer for the Fashion and Textile Museum
• Hetty Lawlor painted Geri Horner (Ginger Spice) for the British Music Experience

I thought the choices were interesting - and what's more the commissioned portraits were all excellent.

Interestingly the judges didn't see the commissioned portraits until the portrait painting in 4 hours had been completed.

The Judges view ALL the portraits for the final for the first time

Their conclusion:

• all top quality - definitely no "duffers" 
• all three produced very strong portraits 
• all three were easily commissionable 
• it was the toughest decision ever!

Portraits by Danny Howes

Danny was generally considered by the Judges to be a 'safe pair of hands' and 'very reliable' and 'very commissionable'.

Kathleen found his portrait of Emili to be incredibly competent. His treatment of Emili's hair was a 'tour de force'. Kate really liked some beautiful passages of paint in her portrait.  Tai felt it was a bit prosaic and lacking in poetry.

Tai liked how his vision was so much larger and the finesse was more accomplished when given more than four hours for a portrait. Kate was very taken by all the tools. Kathleen was impressed by how he had captured vivacity and energy in the face and expresses who the sitter is as a man.

In my view, Danny's was the largest and most complete of all the portraits of Emili and the only one to bring in a lot more than a head and shoulders perspective. He'd made the best use of the time and had adjusted his normal way of painting to achieve this without losing control over his brushwork.

Personally speaking I found Danny's commission the most professional and by far the most impressive in terms of "most likely to be asked to do a portrait commission for the National Portrait Gallery" - in the very near future!

Portraits by Samira Addo

Their view was that Samira was the biggest risk of the three but that she played with colour and colour contrast and her portrait of Emili had captured the spirit of the person she was representing.

All three were impressed by Samira's treatment of Zandra Rhodes, the tilt of the head, the mouth open (only possible when painting from a photo!), leaving passages of orange in her face. Tai found it breathtaking.

Kate said they wanted somebody exciting and different and that's what she got from these paintings.

In my view while the approach to painting is interesting and distinctive, Samira's portrait of Emili was the most incomplete of the three. Yet again, there was lots of white space - as in unpainted canvas. There has been no attempt at context at any stage during the competition.

Portraits by Hetty Lawlor

The Judges felt Hetty had chosen a phenomenal angle when painting Emili and really found the look in Emili's eye - but they wanted to see her produce more from the poise. They felt she had got the best likeness and had consistently achieved the best likeness in every round. Kate felt that her portrait of Emili might be her favourite. Tai commented that she got the best likeness.

Tai and Kathleen both felt she got a great sense of Geri.

I thought Hetty had produced both a very accurate likeness and an excellent portrait of Emili and I'm not in the least bit surprised that Emili Sande chose it.

I was surprised by how accomplished her work was when she stepped up with the size she worked at with the commissioned portrait.

The best portrait artist of the year?

Did the best portrait artist win? That depends on who's making the decision.

Is this competition capable of determining "the best portrait artist of the year".

It can certainly come up with answer so long as you preface with "Sky Arts" and limit consideration only to those who applied and who the Judges liked - but that's NOT the same thing as "the portrait artist of the year" by a very long way.

There was an interesting response to those who voted in response to Sky Arts question about who should take The Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year

The finale is tonight!! But who's taking home the crown of #portraitartistoftheyear from these three amazing artists? 🤔🎨

— Sky Arts (@SkyArts) 20 March 2018

Let's start at the beginning.

This is what two of the judges said at the beginning of the programme about the Final

What we want to see is not only the ability to capture likeness but to make art, to make something that tells us about what it is like to be alive today
Tai Shan Schierenberg

We need to know this is an artist who will continue to grow and evolve and make us proud
British art historian, curator and arts broadcaster Kate Bryan

Now on this basis alone I knew the winner was going to be Samira.

Why? Well, there's a number of reasons which largely revolve around what they said (as per the edit) and the profiles of the artists in the final

• Danny was the safe and reliable option. They were not expecting fireworks - nor given his experience were they expecting any major change in the way he worked. Having come to this conclusion in advance they were very unlikely to change their minds.
• Hetty uses coloured pencils. That on its own meant she was very unlikely to win - because there is a well established aversion within the 'higher echelons' of the British art world to anything which isn't oil or acrylics when it comes to creating portraits (check out the terms and conditions of the BP Portrait Award re. media). Interestingly we don't always see this in other countries where there seems to be more openness and tolerance for the use of other media for portraiture.
• Samira was the only one who intrigued Tai - in terms of painting - and when all said and done the only portrait artist amongst the Judges is Tai!

Artists all over the world complain about Judges and how selections are made.

However in my opinion they are wrong to do so (even though I sometimes complain myself!) - if they don't "get" one fundamental "truth".

THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWER - there can only ever be 'personal opinion'.

Which means that Portrait Artist of the Year in a sense is a nonsense title - because this is a decision based on three people and a very limited pool of candidates - which certainly does does not include many of the best portrait artists around today.

This is a TALENT competition, not a definitive statement about who is the best portrait artist.

To make some sort of assessment of the "best portrait artist", we'd need to see a lot more than the number of portraits we see in this competition - and remember that not every artist cares for competitions - no matter how good, bad or indifferent they are.

We also can't be talking about "best portrait artist" in terms of the future because that can only ever be pure and utter speculation.

After all, we only have to look at how wrong so many Judges have been in the past when we try and remember the names of people who have won talent contests - because they aren't around any more!

Like other competitions this competition is theoretically judged on the best performance in the last round - which means we're talking "best paintings" and not "best artist".

If you want to engage with the masses then at some point all the best talent competitions involve the public - and they decide. However, then the competition potentially runs foul of the problem that the public always vote for the person they like the best irrespective of who actually performs best.

Add in a fourth judge - as they did in the first series of this programme - and you might well get a very different decision - because another perspective and opinion has been added to the mix.

Sandy Nairne arrived as the independent Judge for the Final of the First series and announced that capturing a likeness was an absolute and necessary prerequisite of a portrait painter i.e. portrait painting is NOT JUST ABOUT THE ART! It actually has to look like the person.

I found it interesting how Sandy Nairne did not get to continue in that role of independent and well informed expert artbiter - and one can only speculate as to the reasons!. However the discontinuity of opinions between somebody whose business was all about displaying and commissioning portraits and a panel which includes two judges with much less experience of portraiture for me speaks volumes.

So - bottom line - judgement when based on personal opinion basically boils down to what an individual likes (and dislikes) - and, in this instance, who these three Judges like.

That's why I'm always intrigued by who is judging a competition and why I regard it as essential that this information is shared with prospective applicants for a competition BEFORE the closure date for submissions.

You can almost tell what will happen just by who gets chosen as judges.

For example, this particular panel have demonstrated a complete aversion to the Florentine 'traditional' school of portraiture in this series. Whether that is right or fair is up for debate - however the fact is they don't like it.

So much so that I'd venture to suggest that it may very well be a complete waste of time for any painter who has been taught to paint in a classical way to enter this competition. You'd do far better to enter the BP where such prejudice is very definitely not evident based on the eclectic range of portraits that get selected for the BP exhibitions.

So as to the outcome - Samira won - as I knew she would. 

At the end of the day, the Judges ignored the excellent draughtsmanship and the craftsmanship and competence in producing very good likenesses and very good portraits - and went for that illusive "magic" element (which Simon Cowell calls the "x" factor!)

However, I think THEY ALL DID WELL overall and I have three alternative titles for them

• Hetty is "Best Practitioner in getting a Consistent Likeness"
• Danny is "Most Likely to be Commissioned by Major Institutions"
• Samira is "Most Magical Treatment of Paint" (to quote Tai) 

NONE of them are Portrait Artist of the Year because we are looking at far too few portraits to make that assessment.

I was really sorry for Danny who had obviously put his heart and soul into it and was obviously really upset not to win. I felt he really deserved it with that simply stunning commission portrait and the way he progressed his painting during the course of the competition.  I was also extremely impressed by Hetty's unnerving ability to capture people every single time without any apparent effort.

I guess I'm getting old and am just past the "being impressed by magic" stage.....

Let's not forget, the real test of "who is the best" really comes in five years time and ten years time - when we check back to see how people are doing as portrait artists......

Did you see local artist @dannyhowesart on the final of @SkyArts #PortraitArtistoftheYear last night? His portrait of design legend and @pentagram co-founder Sir Kenneth Grange was out of this world 👏🏼💯 pic.twitter.com/OHw32zTRo4

— Brum Design Festival (@designfestbrum) 21 March 2018

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REFERENCE: Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 

This is the Call for Entries - Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2019

Below are my PREVIOUS blog posts about the 2018 competition and my reviews of earlier heats - in which I comment on specific aspects for aspiring future contestants!

• Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - Call for Entries
• How to watch Sky Arts - Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 without subscribing to Sky!
• Review: Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - Episode 1
• Review: Episode 2 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018
• Review: Episode 3 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 (now updated with the interview with the winner)
• Review: Episode 4 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018
• Review: Episode 5 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018
• Review: Episode 6 of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018
• Review: Episode 7 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018
• Review: Semi Finals of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018

Previous Years

• Gareth Reid is Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2017