Review: Episode 3 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2024 (Series 11)

Episode 3 pf Portrait Artist of the Year was an interesting one. I always perk up when the self portraits get bigger!

The Artists with series presenter Stephen Mangan

Episode 3: The Sitters

The sitters for Week 3 were all men aged between 30 and 45 - with short hair! 

I'm beginning to wonder if the strategy for series 11 is big names (Episodes 1 and 3), alternating with less well known names (Episodes 2 and 4?)

Top right: Dan Snow
Bottom left: Stephen Frayne
Bottom right: Layton Williams

"The sitters are all giving good sitting and the artists are responding" Tai

The three sitters were

• Dan Snow (age 45) -  a British popular historian and television presenter. He's done a number of epic projects related to past historical events. He seemed to talk most of the time and was a self-confessed fidgit. His special object was a ship in a bottle.
• Layton Williams (age 30) - an English actor, singer, dancer and musical theatre performer known for playing the role of Stephen Carmichael in the television series Bad Education (2012-2014) and his work in the West End theatre. His first job was at the age of twelve playing the title role in Billy Elliot the Musical in London's West End (2007-2008). More recently he excelled in the 21st series of Strictly Come Dancing and was a runner-up in the final. He wore feathers to the Heat - and some very odd trousers and shoes.  His special item was his vocal steamer. There was general agreement among the Judges and artists that Layton was a fantastic sitter.
• Steven Frayne aka "Dynamo" (age 41) - a British magician born in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His television show Dynamo: Magician Impossible ran from July 2011 to September 2014, and saw him win the Best Entertainment Programme award at the 2012 and 2013 Broadcast Awards. He brough a back of cards inside a bottle with an opening which was smaller than the cards.
  

Episode 3: The Artists

"There's some really good artists in the room today" 

Kathleen Soriano

All the artists are listed below alphabetically by surname - but are not differentiated between professional and amateur. 

• The link to their main 'contact' site is embedded in their name and social media sites follow - if available.
• however this week we have more people with no internet presence for their art. I'm assuming they're all amateurs....?

Still no link to their profiles on this page https://www.skyartsartistoftheyear.tv/portrait-artist-of-the-year/profiles/

Artists having a break after they finished

• Brogan Bertie (Instagram) - He was born in 1995 in South London and is now a painter and leatherworker based in Margate. In 2019, he graduated with a BA (Hons) in Illustration and Visual Media from London College of Communication. He worked in freelance illustration and animation until moving to Margate and training in leatherwork with Cope Studio.His self portrait took him 5 hours - but he's practiced painting a portrait within 4 hours before the heat
• Rachel Chen - She's a dental student from Dublin who trains for triathlons
• Manvir Dobb - She studied Spanish and History before switching to Medicine. Lives in Warwick.
• Bessie Kirkham (Instagram) - an artist and a barista living in London. She studied painting at Goldsmiths BA 2020-23 and was Goldsmiths Painter of the Year 2023. She likes painting in blue and her self portrait took 3 months to paint. (I was slightly confused with this artist when the subtitles decided to make her a barrister!)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bessie (@bessiefranceskirkham)

• Seana McEvoy (Instagram) - a film studies student from Warrenpoint in County Down. BA Fine Art Currently studying MA Production Design at the National Film and Television School. She likes surrealist art and spent 50 hours on her drawing which looks like a very detailed grissaile
• Simon Painter (Instagram) - A former art teacher, (called Mr Painter) who retired in 2021 from Darwen in Lancashire
• Rob Perry (Instagram) - The Director of Art at a prep school in Surrey. His self portrait was painted in oils and took eight hours. He produced a monumental head of Dan!
• Caroline Pool (Facebook | Instagram) - grew up in Bangkok, Thailand before moving to England where she gained her Foundation Diploma in Art & Design at Central St Martin’s, London and her BA (HONS) Illustration degree at Brighton University. After working in set design for feature films throughout her 20’s, Caroline followed her instincts and returned to painting. Now lives and works in South Shropshire and is a member of Contemporary British Portrait Painters

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A post shared by CAROLINE POOL (@carolinepoolart)

• Ben Wilshaw-Quinn (Instagram) - a traditionally trained artist, whose practice focuses on naturalistic figurative and animal art. He's a Fine Art Graduate from Loughborough University. Lives in Bedford and works for a fine art publisher. He had a portrait exhibited  in the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition in 2023 and was also awarded 3rd prize in the Windsor & Newton Young Artist Award for his self portrait - which is the one he submitted to get into this heat!

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A post shared by Ben Wilshaw-Quinn (@ben_wq)

The Self Portrait Submissions

I analysed how the self portraits stacked up in terms of format, size and scope.

There seemed to be an awful lot of small paintings in this heat and an awful lot of heads or head and shoulders. Artists need to be more ambitious!

FORMAT

• Portrait format x 8
• Landscape x 1
• Square x 0

SIZE

• Large x 1
• Large/Medium x 4
• Medium x 3
• Small x 1
• Tiny x

SCOPE 

• full size or most of body (including hand) x 1
• head and upper torso (no hands) x 4
• head, shoulder and hand x 2
• head and shoulders x 1
• head x 1

Themes

As always, when I watch the programme (which is typically at least twice and sometimes three times), I try to identify themes which are either:

• recurrent golden oldies - ones you really need to get to grips with if you want to participate in a future programme
• ones unique to this particular episode
• matters relevant to portraiture or being an artist

Larger self portraits

Artists lined up with their self portraits
- the majority are large/medium or larger sizes
only two are small paintings

I am still totally convinced that the larger self-portrait is the way to go - and I'm pleased to see that a number of artists in this heat agreed with me.

They've established they can paint to at least this size!

One artist in this heat definitely got short-listed IMO because their self portrait, as well as being good and well painted, was also larger than some others.

Which artist gets which sitter?

I wondered with this episode, how artists are grouped together and how they are allocated to different sitters. 

As in its was very obvious, to me, that Brogan Bertie was going to get Layton Williams.

Getting the proportions right

If you decide as an artist, to portray more than the head and shoulders, you are immediately into 

• the challenge of not only painting other parts of the body well 
• AND getting every other part of the body sized correctly and proportional to the whole.

It's a challenge which many artists mess up. I must confess I tend to mentally "switch off" from taking an artist seriously as soon as they get the proportions of a portrait wrong. If you don't know how to sight size, you shouldn't be tackling a portrait of more than a head.

I'm afraid I have to highlight Manvir's portrait of Dan which portrayed him a very small head. She was very brave and bold to have a go at doing the whole body - but she really needed to make sure she knew how to judge the relationships between different appendages to the torso.

(That said, there's lots of artists who can't get the proportions of features on a head correct!!).

TIP: Go to life drawing classes and practice sight size measurement to understand better the relative size of different parts of the anatomy to the size of the head

Gridding up

Using a grid is something a lot of artists do when painting from a photograph. It's certainly a very useful device for getting proportions correct - and a number of artists used a grid in this heat.

I think artists sometimes forget that you can also use grids to work out the best angle to paint the sitter and how to place the sitter on the support.

Get the eyes in the right place and you're off and running!!

Getting the eyes right

The saying is that "the eyes are a window to the soul". 

I found myself looking at some eyes and feeling as if the artist was a good painter, purely on their ability to render eyes correctly and make them feel alive.

Getting the stripes right

In my experience, you can always tell how experienced a painter is at painting portraits by how they paint stripes - particularly stripes in clothing. 

Layton was wearing a striped shirt. When you get to the image of the three paintings of Layton, pay particular attention to the stripes - and prepare to be impressed by one who painted alla prima (at first attempt)

Backgrounds

Slapping on the background at the end is rarely a good move.

A background can easily make - or break - a painting. I found myself shouting "Noooooooooo!!"out loud at one artist as the artist completely destroyed the impact of their portrait by doing just that.

Others had odd shapes in the backgrounds - which are distinctly distracting and to be avoided if at all possible when painting a portrait.

TIP: Doing your prep at the beginning includes having a long hard think about how you will paint the background and what colour and tone to use - and at what time to introduce that colour/tone - so you have a reference to bounce off!

PS. It was interesting to hear the Ben uses acrylic wall paint when painting in backgrounds. I thunk he might want to review the lightfastness and hence longevity of that approach.

Sizing the painting for your sitter's walls

Being able to add to your CV that your portrait is in the collection of (named celebrity) is an aspiration many can earn.

Dan Snow eventually chose a smaller painting which he knew he could fit it into a space on hs walls. The painting was smaller because it helped the artist in terms of her modified approach to painting for the competition time allowance.

It's certainly true that most sitters are likely to find it much easier to hang a small work than a bigger work - but in part it wholly depends on just how impressed they are with your portrait.

Using a timer - to avoid getting your timing wrong

Rachel Chen worked out how much time she should allocate to different parts of the portrait - and then used the timer on her smartphone to keep track of how she was doing.

It sounded a very helpful technique - particularly if you have practiced painting within 4 hours at home and have worked out how much time you need to allocate to each stage eg 

• choosing a view/composition 
• drawing in 
• painting the face
• painting other parts of the sitter
• doing the background

It helps to codify what you have learned from the 4 hour practice exercises in terms of making the most of the time available - and not being "unfinished" by default rather than a lack of design!

I can't help thinking it's probably a spin off from being a triathlete - since doing a triathlong is all about timing stages!!

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The Portraits and the Judging

The Three Judges

By the end we had:

• 2 x portraits of the full figure in a chair, including hands and feet  - by Manvir and Bessie
• 4 x Head and shoulders by Rob and Caroline (both of Dan) and Sheana and Ben (both of Layton)
• 2 x Head and upper torso by Simon and Rachel
• 1 - Head and upper torso including hands by Brogan

Who the Sitters chose

As last week, I'm going to include the brilliant new innovation of an image which shows all three portraits of a sitter together. It's such a welcome addition to highlight outcomes of the show - and encourage more people to watch the programme!

Dan Snow

Portraits of Dan Snow
Top right: Rob Perry
Bottom left: Manvir Dobb
Bottom right: Caroline Pool

Dan chose the painting by Caroline Pool - because he knew he had a space which it would fit into.

It might sound prosaic but it's the way many buyers think! (or rather the reverse "Where would I put it?")

Layton Williams

Portrait of Layton Williams by:

Left: Brogan Bertie

Top right: Sheana McEvoy

Bottom right: Ben Wilshaw-Quinn

It would have been quite easy to shortlist all the portraits from this group. Ben got blown out because Rob did a bigger and better self-portrait and his was small. My perennial theme strikes again IMO.

The main problem with the image above is you cannot actually see the actual painting in Brogan's work.

Layton chose the mono drawing by Sheona - which I knew he would!

Stephen Frayne

Portraits of Stephen Frayne
Top left: Bessie Markham
Top right: Simon Painter
Bottom: Rachel Chen 

For me, they were all "OK" as in "good effort but does not blow my socks off".

They were also the paintings with the least satisfactory backgrounds.

Simon's was looking promising, right up until the moment he painted the background a really disgusting colour - and killed it stone dead.

I applauded Bessie for doing a full figure and getting the special item in - but IMO she sized it wrong on the support. Basic error. Plus the background was odd.

I really liked Rachel's painting of Stephen's eyes - they were very engaging. But that red triangle aiming at the side of his head is very distracting. A reminder that you don't have to paint something simply because it is there if it adds nothing - and possibly detracts - from the overall composition. 

Stephen chose the painting by Bessie - because she had included the special item  of a pack of playing cards inside a bottle (which he gave to her).  I guess for him, it makes it the best record of the day.

The Shortlist

Waiting to hear who is shortlisted

The Judges review the artists' artwork FOUR times

• before the heat - when reviewing digital images of the self-portraits to select those participating in the Heats
• at the beginning of the heat - when they consider the actual self-portrait submissions
• at lunchtime and then
• again at the end after the sitters have reviewed the artwork.

Interestingly none of the artists chosen by the sitters were chosen by the Judges. I can't actually remember the last time that happened.

Those shortlisted were:

• Rob Perry
• Seana McEvoy
• Brogan Bertie

Below are the three sets of portraits - the self portrait and the heat painting for each artist and you can see what they look like as pairs of paintings - plus my comments on the two paintings.

Rob Parry

Self portrait and portrait of Dan Snow
by Rob Parry

These two demonstrate very clearly that Rob Parry knows "how to paint blokes".

The heads in terms of structure, features, colour and tonal variation are both excellent.

However they're "safe" - as in not exciting. Perfectly competent - but commission worthy would remain a question mark for me.

Seana McEvoy

Self portrait and portrait of Layton Williams 
by Seana McEvoy

I loved both of her portraits - but then I love anybody who can draw well and work in monochrome and have impact.

She was my favourite and I think she might well have been a very worthy winner but for.....

Brogan Bertie

Self portrait and portrait of Layton Williams 
by Brogan Bertie

You can only really appreciate Brogan when the camera goes in close and you can see all the mark-making of the "one hit/leave it alone" approach that he uses.

It makes his painting exciting. It can also lead to problems if he doesn't get things right first time.

He wasn't my winner - because he's lost the likeness on the face and (I think) the head is also too small.  However I can't deny he's exciting.

PAOTY 2024 Episode 3 Winner

L to R: Seana McEvoy, Rob Parry and Brogan Bertie

The winner of episode 3 was Brogan Bertie

This is why the Judges said he won

• a strong sense of him knowing what he's doing
• "a very exciting way to make art"
• "the way he paints is very unforgiving"

The thing for me is that Brogan was by far the most exciting PAINTER in this heat. Every mark went down alla prima and was not disturbed - meaning no mixing and no finessing. He was, I think, also the only one who made the Judges "gag" to see what he would do next. That's what makes you a winner.....

Granted - he placed the head very high - and then messed it up (i.e. too small and overpainted) BUT he was the only person who attempted to paint hands when going for an upper torso. His are the only only well developed hands in this heat.

I think he might well have stormed the heat if he had only done a large self-portrait and then given himself more time for (say) a head and shoulders painting.

He may come to regret that small self portrait as he progresses to the next stage.

Next Episode

The sitters for Episode 2 are not yet up on the episodes listing on the NOW website - where they can normally be found.

However, (from an article I've got) that there's a pretty good chance it's 

• Rosie Jones (Comedian), 
• Linton Kwesi Johnson (Poet) - never heard of him
• Andy Cole (Sports Personality) - unsure who this is but I assume a footballer

Do you want to paint in a heat next year?

This is my post last year about the Call for Entries: Series 11 of Portrait Artist of the Year (next year). Essential reading for all those who want to do well - it's got links to all my past reviews and all the themes and tips identified in the last five years.

Watch out for my post about the Call for Entries for Series 12 which I'll be writing during the course of this series.