Alert - Celebrity Portrait Artist of the Year

It's very nearly Christmas so by definition we start to get some silly programmes popping up.

On Tuesday 18th December, there is going to be a one-off special edition of Portrait Artist of the Year - for celebrities. I guess if you have an extremely popular programme it can only be so long before the celebrities want to be part of it too!

Participants in Celebrity Portrait Artist of the Year

I've been trying to work out who's in it (and even why they are a celebrity!) for some days.

This is as far as I've got - so you can decide for yourself whether or not you're tempted.  The Judges and presenters are the usual suspects - as you can see above!

Celebrities painting celebrities?? Sign us up! Join us on 18 December for a very special edition of Portrait Artist Of The Year 😍🎨 #PAOTY pic.twitter.com/tRoqaoYccb

— Sky Arts (@SkyArts) 5 December 2018

I've had a good look at the video trailer and it seems to me the split is as follows (after I waited long enough for somebody to remember to release something saying what it was about - and who was in it!).

Painter Participants

Painter Participants include:

• Jim Moir (a.k.a. Vic Reeves) who has been painting and exhibiting for some time.

Celebrity portrait artist of the year. pic.twitter.com/ZspFRAFLjm

— Jim Moir (@JamesMoir10) May 4, 2018

• Maureen Lipman - the actress who paints using an iPad and "tells all" about what it was like on the programme (filmed this summer) in her Saga Interview. My money's on her!

(she) found painting against the clock was excruciating.
‘I thought it would be a piece of cake but I started badly, just like being in an exam,’ she says. ‘My heart was banging; I could feel this pounding in my vagus nerve. I got myself into a right state. I'm not good at being bad at things.’

• Tomasz Schafernaker - the British-Polish meteorologist who works for for BBC Weather - who appears to be the only person not likely to make jokes and also seems to be a bit of a dab hand with a pencil. His Instagram seems to have an awful lot of art - which I assume is by Tomasz. 

Video: how it’s done... Sir #DavidAttenborough🌿#art #realism #colourpencil🖍 pic.twitter.com/vYpmDSZHIj

— Tomasz Schafernaker (@Schafernaker) February 13, 2018

• Phill Jupitus - the comedian and panel game person - and cartoonist
• Josie Long - stand-up comedian and cartoonist and new Mum - and owner of an unconventional website where you can see her cartoons
• Joe Lycett - another comedian. Obviously musicians, actors and athletes can't paint....  but Joe can paint Boris on an egg!

'I painted Boris Johnson on an egg!' @joelycett has pretty much nailed #Brexit with this painting! 😂 pic.twitter.com/PUN48N5dKD

— BBC The One Show (@BBCTheOneShow) December 5, 2018

Celebrity Sitters

The three sitters are:

• Billy Howle - the actor (I've never heard of him - but I have watched him as Leonard Vole in Witness for the Prosecution)
• Howard Jacobson - the novelist who has won the Booker Prize, wrote The History Man (who remembers that?) and describes himself apparently as a Jewish Jane Austen
• Kanya King - the Mobo awards founder 

Here's the video trailer on Twitter....

Celebrities painting celebrities?? Sign us up! Join us on 18 December for a very special edition of Portrait Artist Of The Year 😍🎨 #PAOTY pic.twitter.com/tRoqaoYccb

— Sky Arts (@SkyArts) December 5, 2018