Wednesday, February 16, 2022

What did we think of 'Watercolour Challenge' 2022?

After four weeks of daily episodes on weekdays, the new version of Watercolour Challenge on Channel 5 came to an end last Friday.

  • I started off hopeful, 
  • was disappointed at the beginning by the technical cock-up, and 
  • then it started to irritate me as the series went on.

I decided to do a review, however I decided it might be wise to see if others were feeling in the same way. 

So I asked this question on my Facebook - and received LOTS of very detailed responses!  Extracts are provided below.

I'm writing a review of the Channel 5 Watercolour Challenge Series. What did you think of it?
* What did they do well?
* What could be improved?
I've also been keeping an eye on the responses online to the programme - and people have been quite outspoken on the topic of the mentor/Judges.  Digital Spy | Watercolour Challenge Channel 5 started with lots looking forward to the return and quickly began to spot deficits and problems. For example - most wanted to see much more of the artists painting - and explaining what they were doing and why.

This post summarises both my thoughts and those of others - with quotes!

Note the series is available - on demand and online on Channel 5  

The real Watercolour Challenge contest 

Channel 5 (2022) versus Channel 4 (1998-2001)


Of course you have to be old enough to be able to compare the two! However for those of us who do remember both, the overwhelming consensus is that the new version is a pale imitation of the original - and needs to get its act together.

  • The positives of the programme reduced for me as the series went on.
  • Aspects which I put down to just being "different" began to grate as the series progressed
  • Many people commented that they didn't watch all the programmes despite having intended to do so.

Here are some summary views
Glad to have an art programme to watch, but felt it could have been so much better! (VG)
A poor copy of the original series, sadly. (SG)
5/10. Could do better! (PF)
Very disappointing, to put it mildly. (NS)
Too much repetition , out of sync editing , poor standard of judges except Peter, everyone gets a win. The good artists on here and there were a few had their efforts demeaned being beaten by someone with no ability whatsoever. (DP)
I used to love this show but for me the presenter was a major let down and some of the professional artists, lacked how can i put it "professionalism". I stopped watching. (KH)
Despite numerous aspects that people felt were unsatisfactory, it was interesting to see it prompted people to get their paints out! I guess it was a case of "I can do better than that!"
Still enjoyed watching though - I was inspired to get my watercolours out after a few months of not using them.

How do the the different series compare on different aspects?


I'm going to review different aspects of the Channel 5 programmes below - sometimes with reference to the Channel 4 series - and with suggestions for how any future series could be improved.

Review comments cover:
  • the artists
  • the mentor/Judges
  • the presenter
  • the programme format
  • technical aspects
The artists from Devon


ARTISTS: 

  • artists in the Channel 4 series tended to have more expertise and skills in the use of watercolour; 
  • artists in the recent Channel 5 series were a lovely bunch of people BUT....... 
    • some (many?) were not landscape painters 
    • and/or had not painted plein air before 
    • and episode winning paintings were often less good than the Channel 4 series
It's not unusual for amateur artists to be interested in this sort of programme. The people in this series participating were pretty typical of those who like painting in watercolour i.e. they typically do not paint outside, they prefer portraiture, animals and still life done at home from photos to landscapes painted from life. 

What was very odd was where were all the middle aged / older women who are so omnipresent in watercolour societies and watercolour painting classes and courses? Why were most of the women much younger than the men?

However I'm pretty sure we had professionals and semi-professionals painting in the first series on Channel 4 - and a much better mix of age groups among the women.

Really frustrated with this series. The quality of contestants and of most of the judges was appalling- some of the contestants admitted they weren’t watercolourists nor landscape painters. .... I remember the original series and the quality of contestant was far superior. (SK)
I admire anyone who puts themselves forward for such televised art programmes - something I would never do! - but I was surprised at how “amateur” some of these amateur painters were. I remember seeing more proficient artists in the original series. (SG)

From my perspective, I could see that

  • there had been efforts to generate diversity of artists in terms of gender, ethnicity and disability.
  • all the artists were able to talk to camera. (If you've ever wondered why some people get selected for television and other really good artists do not, a lot of it is to do with whether they can speak naturally while 'on camera').
  • skill levels tended to be very similar. I'd have liked to have seen a better range of skills levels. 

Keeping the same artists all week

I was initially taken with the idea of having the same four artists all week. Mainly because people have subjects they like and dislike and I thought it might make for a fairer outcome - but I was disappointed by reality.

The major disadvantage of keeping the four artists all week is none of the artists had "the journey" - there was absolutely no progression between episodes as the time period was too short 
  • this in part was a product of the quality of the teaching
  • UNLIKE other "game" type shows based around crafts of one sort or another where episodes are interludes and people come back to the same place week after week
  • Watching the progression of an individual over the course of the series is what hooks people in to watch the entire series
  • plus there seemed to be some "buggins turn" element to this series re. who got artist of the day (see below for more on this topic)
This show is just too compressed to get any progression. Coupled with the deficits for some participants of good quality advice, it's totally unsurprising that there was not very much in terms of progress. Most were painting at the end of the week in much the same way they did at the beginning. Notwithstanding a few experiments with variable results along the way.
they all seemed to me to be genuine amateurs i.e. they were doing watercolours for the sheer love of it. I also liked seeing the same group of artists working over several days but I would like have to have known that we were seeing the episodes in the order in which they were filmed - so as to get some sense of the progress each artist was making during the week. (LW)

Scope for improvement: 

In terms of standards, this programme has a LOT of scope to improve.
What I would have liked to have seen were:
  • Better marketing of the opportunity to participate - which would have generated a much better range of artists to choose from. 
  • A "Call for Entries: which asks all artists the following questions:
    • Do you paint landscapes on a regular basis?
    • Have you ever painted plein air before?
    • Can you produce a good quality landscape painting in 3 hours?
    • and/or Make each applicant film/produce a plein air painting in three hours as part of the application process - it'll instantly sort some of the wheat from the chaff!
  • More artists with better drawing skills and more knowledge of how watercolour works i.e. mentor does not have to cover basics
  • Select artists who are used to painting landscapes and are more used to painting plein air - or at least some who have had a go once or twice before the programme!
  • Test possible artists in front of a camera eg do demos and interviews via Zoom. Make sure they are articulate - and make sure that experienced artists are sat with you during the auditions - to weed out those who "talk a good talk" but actually spout complete "whiffle waffle".
  • Expose selected artists to good quality instruction from very experienced plein air watercolour artists - and Peter Cronin was the only one who qualifies on that count in this series - with locations chosen with a view to a clear structure of learning points planned with the Mentor in advance
In terms of "gaming", one way forward is to adopt the frequently used model (e.g. as used by the Photography competition on Sky Arts) where there's a group of individuals who are above basic skills level who are then exposed to a different and well known mentor each week in different locations for a specific challenge - and one artist goes home every week.

The four artists from Yorkshire


THE MENTOR / JUDGES


I was disappointed. Only ONE was a true watercolour artist. In my view:
Some were more critical than me 
(apart, obviously, from Peter Cronin) a bunch of judges whose work nobody was impressed with, who spouted nothing but platitudes when asked for advice and who came up with ugly examples when picking up the brushes to show us painting techniques. (SM)
While others disagreed
The artist/judge in Wales seems head and shoulders above the ones I saw in Plymouth and St.Ives. Neither of those seemed any good at making watercolours and their advice and final comments were at best spurious. The chap in St Ives was dreadful! (PM)
I thought the man in Wales and the man in Yorkshire were both excellent and gave very clear and specific advice which the artists could follow if they wanted to. The woman in Devon seemed to want them all to paint in the same style she did and the man in Cornwall was all waffle. (LW)
Some of the demonstrations were really awful. Frankly I really don't see the point of having people who are not experts telling amateurs who are not experts what to do. I could be very explicit at this point and provide some concrete examples - but I won't - except to say in one episode in Cornwall I was shouting at the television about a couple of points - one important one which was completely omitted and another where the Judge contradicted himself within the space of 5 minutes.

On the whole I think the artists produced results which were in spite of some of the advice they received rather than because of it. That's because if an artist was not accustomed to using watercolour or working plein air, they often weren't offering the right advice.

The Mentors/Judges - week by week


In order of the four weeks of the Channel 5 series, the mentors/Judges were:
Lisa, this weeks expert, has a wonderfully warm and happy smiling face and personality.  
I very much like Lisa's gentle, natural yet informative style of approaching each artist and suggesting helpful directions
Digital Spy comments
  • YORKSHIRE: Ady Wright 
    • a disabled ex soldier who took up painting during rehabilitation after a very serious life-changing injury. He attributes finding art as saving his mental health - and that's a message which is to be very much applauded. 
    • However, he paints using acrylics as if they were OILS(!) - including with impasto and the obvious use of a knife - and NOT in a watercoloury way (and this is a programme about watercolour!!!). 
    • He's self-taught - via books and YouTube Videos and a lot of the advice sounded very general to me. 
    • Having a 'good backstory" and learning to paint on your own does not, for me, make you an obvious choice as an "art expert" for a watercolour programme - especially when there is no demonstrable use of watercolour on his website. 
    • I'm not knocking his art. I'm just saying there is an enormous mismatch between what he produces and the nature of the programme. Bottom line, I'm more persuaded about the authenticity of an artist when I can find correlation between what they say and what they do - and when they have a well used watercolour box!
A self taught painter in the plein air tradition, Peter Cronin uses pure transparent watercolour to record the inherent and latent beauty witnessed in our natural and manmade environments.
He works outdoors in front of the subject whenever possible, both for the education and exhilaration that plein air work provides. (Pure Watercolour Society profile)
Peter's landscapes really show the gorgeous translucency of pure watercolour. I love his lightness of touch and particularly like his trees, where he lets the watered down paint run and do some of the work. Then, once he paints in the branches it works wonderfully. Less is more and he doesn't overwork them, or need to put in too much detail. Digital spy comment
  • CORNWALL: Billy Burman 
    • I have very real problems with this artist. 
    • He may paint using watercolour; he may have lived in Cornwall for a long time; he may belong to a local group of artists and have run an artist's pop-up gallery (which is quite different to "running a gallery") - but I can find no evidence online that he is anything other than an amateur artist who likes to paint flowers.  
    • Some of the artists participating in the series painted better landscapes than this Judge. Some of his comments were quite inane.
    • For me this Judge indicated a real lack of expertise within the production team in relation to validating credentials. 
Is it just me or does anyone else feel that although delicate, his watercolours aren't quite as accomplished as the other professionals featured, or to have very much light/shade or tone?
Last week (Cornwall) was an appalling week in terms of judging, and knowledge quality being shared to the artists. Truly shocked and we found ourselves becoming more and more irritated (SM)
More importantly when compared to the standard of tutor in the Channel 4 series - who were mostly well established and better known professional painters (eg Jason Bowyer, Mike Chaplin, Hazel Soan, and Jenny Wheatley) - there was a VERY big gap in experience, education and expertise.
Expert art judges included the artists Jason Bowyer, Mike Chaplin, Dorothy Dunnett, Annette Kane, Hazel Soan, and Jenny Wheatley. (Channel 4 series art experts / Wikipedia)
In the first series, the artist was titled the "guest art expert" - and very many of them were just that.  Many were members of the two national watercolour societies. 

I got the impression that Channel 5 was too busy ticking all the diversity boxes and completely failing to pay adequate attention to aspects of professional expertise which make a very big difference to the viewer i.e. the actual experience and competence of the art expert.

I don't recall being disappointed very often by the standard of art experts in the Channel 4 series - but I really did feel that Channel 5 could have worked very much harder to raise the standard to eliminate the disparity which exists in this first series

TIPS FOR CHANNEL 5

I always enjoy watching other artists paint, but they really need to reconsider the format and the quality of the so-called professionals involved. (PM)
I think the problem for Channel 5 in future is that they may have difficulty in enrolling new experts given the standard to date.

Here's some tips for next time - if another series is made.
  • Do NOT accept what artists (for Mentor/Judge roles) say about themselves; get references / recommendations from those who are able to say who is good and who is not. 
  • Most important - look at their websites and assess what they paint and show online. It's a very good quick litmus test.
  • Ask the presidents of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours to promote the programme to their members - and ask for artists to nominate themselves as mentors/Judges
  • make sure that ALL the mentor/Judges have plenty of demonstrable/verified experience and expertise in:
    • use of traditional watercolour and/or gouache
    • plein air painting
  • plus have good name recognition eg those who have written teaching articles for the art journals in the UK

The four artists from Wales

THE PRESENTER - FERN BRITTON


Mixed reviews - bottom line Fern Britton is no Hannah Gordon. Those who liked the series were more likely to like Fern.
Fern Briton was great , putting everyone at ease , really enjoyed the series. (JW)
The wonderful thing about Hannah Gordon was her voice which was gentle and mellifluous whereas Fern is more strident, much too shouty and has a dash of "jolly hockey sticks" / infants school teacher about her.

Fern is a good television presenter but I was left thinking maybe this is not the right programme for her. As the series progressed I began to find her far too loud and intrusive - and so REPETITIVE!!!  Also, the programme should emphatically not be about her. 
I used to love this show but for me the presenter was a major let down.
The tenor of the presentation overall seemed patronising to both artists and viewer. (PG)
Fern had nothing to say other than "it's exciting" so many times that it would have made a good drinking game if the whole thing wasn't so depressing. (NS)
How to improve: It would have been much better to have had a television personality who has more experience of painting and more common sense about when to speak and when not to interrupt. 

Plus dump "the last 10 seconds" countdown - it's infantile and patronising. It may be nothing to do with Fern - but  her style for this was one of the reasons I ended up disliking her presentation.

PROGRAMME FORMAT


I ended up with a very strong sense of an inexperienced production team with a bargain basement budget. I mean just look at the size of the parasols for keeping out driving rain!

One aspect which nearly worked very well was the regional focus. 
    • This has always been a programme which has been a delight to watch - in terms of revealing places to visit - and paint - around the UK. 
    • the diversity of locations - in terms of rural places mostly offered good views and urban towns which are not the usual cities that feature on television.
    • BUT not all locations were wonderful e.g. the 20th century modernist house and the empty swimming pool.
    • AND the location of the artists relative to subject matter was not always good. Clearly no artists involved in the locations and set-ups!
Definitely some scope to improve on this aspect.

Many people were very irritated by the endless repetition and poor editing
I found it very irritating! There was a huge amount of repetition within each episode as well as through the week (did they not decide which order they would broadcast them when they made the programmes?). (PG)
the continuity and editing by the production team was very poor. Kept seeing shots of paintings further on in progress being shown early on in the programme and earlier progress later on.
all the clips about each artist repeated in every episode was very irritating - pure padding - I wanted to scream. (LW)

The competition that wasn't


The Channel 4 series had a very clear story about progression - with a proper prize at the end of each week and the series.

The Channel 5 series had a winner each day - but nobody actually won anything. This, in effect, became a bit of a "GroundHog Day" version of a competition. Except for one thing. A number of those watching the series independently arrived at the same conclusion i.e. that there was some sort of arrangement whereby every one of the four artists got to win at least on one day. We were not impressed.  

Not agreeing with the Judges Choice is a feature of any competitive painting programme - but much more so in this series.
I have no idea in what way any artist 'won' anything in that there were no prizes or winning commission, so the competitive format was pointless. (PG)
So, having the same artists was interesting but the sharing out of winners was a bit meh, especially when one was more deserving than the contestant whose 'turn' it was. (PR)
It would have been good to have an overall winner from each area to acknowledge the stand-out artists. And also I feel they really should have mentioned the artists surnames frequently as there was no way of people finding them to give them further opportunity from the programme. (JS)
It seemed to be very much a 'just for fun' competition, and I suspect that the judges did their best to make sure everyone had a daily win - I was fairly confident I knew who would win the last episode. Odd that they didn't have a weekly prize though, even if it was just a certificate, though I'm sure a voucher for art materials wouldn't have stretched the budget too much. (PF)
There should be a reward of some kind for each daily challenge winner. Some means of picking an overall winner for the week should be worked out and the region winners should then compete in a finals week to select a series champion, with a decent reward too.
How to improve:  There needs to some clear progression within the series. 
  • EITHER the teachers need to be much better - with proper good quality demonstrations which are both informative and effective for artists and viewers - so that we can see how people progress within the week AND the viewers at home get hooked by the free tuition
  • OR there needs to be a much more structured competition element - with a proper progression and a proper prize eg artist of the week competes in a final which brings Artist of the Week (from different areas together) for a paintoff!
  • OR best of all the above two options combined!

TECHNICAL ASPECTS:


There were lots of negatives related to how the programmes were made
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
So, despite all the Channel 5 trailers, press publicity and ads that promised the series of Watercolour Challenge would start with ‘our’ Yorkshire episodes, it’s actually kicked off in Devon!
I’ve emailed the production company to find out when they will actually broadcast, so as soon as I know, I’ll share the information…. Apologies for the inconvenience and any disappointment…. ( a post on Facebook)
  • There was then a dreadful period when the "on demand" episodes listed did not appear for ages. Experience seemed to vary depending on what platform you were using to view the programme and whether watching live or on demand.
This viewer sums it up for me.

I've been disappointed in the series. It's called Watercolour Challenge, not landscape challenge, so where is the range of subjects? Some of the artists are obviously not landscape artists, so why not let us see them excelling at what they are good at.

For me as well the choice of "expert" has been a little patchy. Ady the Yorkshire expert, though not to my style, seemed to know what he was talking about, but obviously was not an accomplished watercolourist. Peter Cronin in Wales was excellent and an obvious expert in the subject. This week's, Billy Burman, is very weak, he may be a watercolour artist, but is far from expert.

I'm also finding Fern's commentary and comments pretty inane. I'd love to see a new series but I think they need to inject a bit more into the format.

 

Locations

The episode order was as follows:

Week 1 (Devon)
  • Episode 1: Royal William Yard
  • Episode 2: Meadfoot Beach
  • Episode 3: Dartington Hall
  • Episode 4: Plymouth Sound
  • Episode 5: High Cross House
Week 2 (Yorkshire)
  • Episode 6: Scarborough Bay
  • Episode 7: Goathland Railway Station
  • Episode 8: Castle Howard
  • Episode 9: Peasholm Park
  • Episode 10: Temple of the Four Winds
Week 3 (Wales)
  • Episode 11: St Donat's Castle
  • Episode 12: Brecon Beacons
  • Episode 13: Rhondda Heritage Park
  • Episode 14: River Usk
  • Episode 15: Vale of Glamorgan
Week Four (Cornwall)
  • Episode 16: Porthmeor Beach
  • Episode 17: Jubilee Beach, Penzance
  • Episode 18: St. Ives Harbour
  • Episode 19: Trebah Gardens
  • Episode 20: Mount's Bay
Posted by Making A Mark on Wednesday, February 16, 2022
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