Sunday morning is portrait painting time!

Key facts for all those who'd like to participate in Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Week on Sunday! Below I have:

• FACTS: what you need to know to access the programme and post your work
• TIPS: things I learned last Sunday!
• (I'm being more organised this week!). 

10 Key Facts

1. This live streaming event is accessible by EVERYBODY! It doesn't matter where you live - because it's accessible via Facebook Live Streaming you can watch and join in no matter which country you live in
2. Find the Live Stream on Sunday on this link https://www.facebook.com/SkyTV/live_videos/
3. The painter this week is Duncan Shoosmith - who won Portrait Artist of the Year 2019 (see my post Duncan Shoosmith is Portrait Artist of the Year 2019)
4. The Live Stream starts at 10am and finishes at 2pm (UK time) on Sunday 3rd May 2020. In theory 4 hours but less in reality. If you want to check what time it is for you elsewhere in the world use this website to check what time this is in another time zone https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html You can however watch the live stream as a video after the event as well.
5. To join the conversation, ask the judges questions or give feedback, comment on our facebook live feed or use #PAOTW
6. To show Sky Arts and the Judges your work use #myPAOTW
7. If you want to join in post your artwork on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using #myPAOTW.
8. The deadline for entries is 2pm on the following Friday
9. Check the terms and conditions before posting. You may be fine with them - or you may not like them - but you won't know if you don't read them!
10. The Judges will then choose which artists work they like the best in the show in the following week. 
1. Over 2,000 artworks have been submitted via social media
2. Below are some of the paintings of Akram Khan posted

Some of the Akram Khan paintings on social media.

Much depends on the artist and the sitter.

Celebrity sitter this week is academic and author, Bernardine Evaristo, whose best-selling book “Girl, Woman, Other” won the Booker Prize in 2019. Bernardine will sit for 4 hours as 2019 series winner, Duncan Shoosmith brings her portrait to life for those watching. 

The following Sunday, 10th May, will see 2018 series winner Samira Addo paint celebrated photographer ‘Rankin’. 

The celebrity for the fourth and final week of the series has yet to be confirmed.

Your enjoyment of the programme may depend on whether last week's difficulties have been sorted. Nothing awful happened but it could have been better. Sky Arts - and the portrait artist and the sitter - were all learning last week about how to deliver a programme which is live portrait painting for four hours. Mostly about how the format works and what the technical difficulties are. I'm sure both artist and sitter will be better briefed this week.

Tips for Portrait Artist of the Week

Here are my TIPS

• Have all your kit set up and ready to go before 10am.  That way you can actually listen to Joan explaining how it's all going to work rather than scurrying round finding what you need! ;)
• Take a screendump - or several - of the sitter near the beginning. If you lose the view of the sitter you can then keep going from your screendump.  What I did was:
• have the Live Stream running full screen on my 27" iMac screen
• photographed the screen with my iPhone and then had the screen dump pic sitting in front of me on my iPhone. Or you could use a tablet to do the same thing. Basically two screens work better than one.
• the reason for this is that the programme makers, sitter or artist may encounter technical difficulties or the programme will divert to showing us other things while both artist and sitter enjoy a break.
• You DO NOT have to 
• paint - you can also draw in any media - and lots of people did. Take a cue from the Artist of the Year programmes - if it's a medium which can produce a 2D artwork then you can use it. 
• keep going for the whole four hours. If you finish sooner then call it done. I finished at 1pm last week after finishing earlier and then walking away to make a cup of tea before coming back and doing some final tweaks. 
• submit your artwork if you don't want to - either on the day or later in the week. It's entirely up to you what you do in terms of submitting your work

The stream will be four hours long, from 10am-2pm on Sunday May 3rd on the SKY TV Facebook page. It will continue to be available to replay afterwards on the Sky TV Facebook page. The following Friday at 2pm is the deadline for entries.

• To take a photo to post: Make sure you get your artwork in good natural light and parallel to your lens before you take a photograph
• You MUST use the hashtag and submit as stipulated in the programme and on the Facebook Page if you want your artwork to be viewed by the Judges

This was my effort last week - hatching in pen and sepia ink. It's my second version after I dumped the first one after half an hour as I realised that I'd got shapes and proportions wrong.

Akram Khan by Katherine Tyrrell
pen and sepia ink, 16" x 11"

My previous post

• Portrait Artist of the Week - starts today 10am - I was bit late posting last week!