Review: Episode 6 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2024

This is my fairly prompt review of Episode 6 of Portrait Artist of the Year which was first screened yesterday evening to make up for my very slow review re Episode 5!

The opening of Episode 6 - with all the artists

I rather like the new way of opening the show - with Stephen Mangan being supprounded by the artists.

Episode 6: The Sitters

The Sitters for Episode 6 of PAOTY (Series 11)

The three sitters were

• Jill Scott - a very tall former professional footballer and member of the England Women Football Squad until she retired after their win at the Euros in 2022. She now owns a coffee shop in Northendon and also engages with podcasting and pundits. She also won the twenty-second series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and was crowned "Queen of the Jungle"
• Jimi Famurewa - a British journalist and food critic for the Evening Standard. who frequently appears on Masterchef.
• Lyall Hakaraia (Instagram)- He's a queer community leader arts and entertainment in Dalston and fashion designer. He has Maori heritage.

Episode 6: The Artists

The Artists on the steps of Battersea Arts centre where the heats are filmed.

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

Given Sky Arts has given up on providing links to their website and social media sites, this blog is now the ONLY site where you can find them! The link to their main 'contact' site is embedded in their name and social media sites follow - if available.

• Erin De Burca (Instagram) - a retired teacher (who taught for 25 years in Spain) turned full time artist based in Dublin. She's been painting since 2006 and is self taught.
• Jack Garvin (Instagram) a theatre manager - working in the theatre business in London - who is also an artist based in North London focusing predominantly on portraiture and figurative work. He likes to paint in oils in an alla prima style, with a balance between strong likeness’ and loose painting work. He also painted 11 portraits just before the heat as practice and managed to complete in 3.5 hours by the end!
• Glen Gashi (Instagram) - a genetics graduate based in London. I think he found the four hour time limit difficult. His self portrait included landscapes from an Albanian holiday.

Going from doodling in my sketchbook in lectures to having the opportunity to draw for @artistoftheyear was very surreal!

• Julia Karl (Instagram) - a freelance graphic designer based in an East London. She has always been enthuisastic about art since a child. She graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Arts at Buckinghamshire New University before relocating to London to work as a graphic designer.
• Minjoo Kim (Instagram)- a professional narrative painter who was born and raised in South Korea and now lives in Enfield. She came to London to do an MA in Fine art at the Chelsea College of Art. She's participated in a number of group exhibitions since coming to London. She uses acrylic and created a self portrait which was also critique of over consumption during Covid. The subjects of her paintings, primarily women, are drawn from real-life but depicted in an imaginary setting, or as Kim describes it, ‘a virtual narrative’.
• August Lamm (Instagram) - a creative professional based in London who shares her work via Instagram. She's from New Haven, Connecticut with a degree in art history and she has worked as an art handler, art writer, and art podcaster. She's written a book called Crosshatching in Pen & Ink (2022). This is her self portrait. She avoids screens and prefers to paint from photos.
Sofia Laskari (Instagram) - currently a bakery manager and barista based in South London. She graduated from Camberwell College of Arts (London University) with an Honours degree in Fine Art,painting) in 2023. She's particularly interested in painting women and the different hues of flesh. Her self portrait also included a very good portrait of her ginger cat. Her CV indicates a promising start to a career in art.

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A post shared by Jason Munro (@jason.munro_)

• Jason Munro (Instagram) - a Brighton based senior print designer. He exhibits in sussex and has exhibited with both the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the New English Art Club at the Mall Galleries. You can see much better images of his self portrait and heat painting on his website.
• Helen Lee Robinson - a freelance painter and designer from Glasgow. She exhibited her her very fine oil painting of her sister Lucy - which very used a Holbein turquoise backdrop - as part of the BP Portrait Exhibition 2019. This was one my favourite paintings in this exhibition and I recognised it straight away when I reviewed the portraits on her website. I wished she'd done a wowser one for her self portrait - but instead she did a miniature self portrait - which was very fine but not as good as she can do!

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A post shared by Helen Lee Robinson (@helenlee_artist)

The Self Portraits

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin de Burca (@erin.de.burca)

The range of sizes were extreme.

FORMAT

• Portrait format x 6
• Landscape x 0
• Square x 3

SIZE

• Very Large x 1
• Large x 1
• Large/Medium x 1
• Medium x 1
• Small x 2
• Tiny x 3

SCOPE

• full size or most of body (including hand) x 1
• head, shoulder and hand(s) x 3
• head and upper torso (no hands) x 1
• head and shoulders x 0
• head x 4

Themes

Can you smile?

"Can you smile?" is a question I hear being asked a lot in the heats.

Of course they can smile. 

• Whether they want to smile is another matter. 
• Whether it is a good thing for them to smile is much more relevant to the task in hand.

As soon as I hear the words, I instantly dismiss the artist who asks the question as a total amateur who has never ever painted from life.

That's because it is TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE for any sitter to hold a smile. Which means we all know straight away that it's painted from a photo.

Or as Sandy Nairne, ex Director of the National Portrait Gallery said to me once

"You can count the number of smiling portraits in this gallery on the fingers of one hand"

The HUGE importance of the self portrait

I know I bang on about this a lot - but I'm going to do so again.

That's because you can tell a lot from the self portraits for this exhibition

• who got in on the strength of their self portrait - but was unable to live up to in a four hour heat. I loved Erin's self portrait, it was unusual and it was good. It was such a pity that she couldn't deliver when it came to the heat and her painting was not of the same standard.
• who missed out on being selected for the shortlist because they didn't create an impactful self -portrait. Helen Lee Robinson's self portrait was very small - and very good - but it didn't speak of an artist who could do a commission.

TIP: So a reminder if it takes you a long time to produce a portrait, 

• you MUST work out a strategy for delivering a good portrait in four hours - which Helen did. Her graphite pencil portrait was excellent
• you MUST "wow" the Judges with a self portrait that looks like a £10,000 Commission as your submission - which Helen didn't - but she could have done. I'd like to see her having another go in a future series.

Media: Very long pencils

I always try to find one topic about art media and this week it was about the pencils with the very, very long pencil leads used by graphite artist Glen Gashi.

Very long leads - and I very much approve his use of Mars Lumograph by Staedtler!

I've got friends who use graphite a lot who also like shaving all the wood off and hand carving and shaving a great point - but I've never seen anybody produce points as long as Glen's!

However I liked his rationale, that the long point made him be less impatient and slow down rather than trying to speed up which is not his way of drawing - and potentially break a lead.

Referencing the Object

I'm still in two minds about the object. Artists are not required to include them and to my mind, they would do much better to allocate all their time to producing a great portrait.

TIP: My own take is that including the object just provides scope for you to mess up a perfectly good portrait. So, don't!

For example:

• do NOT include ANY letters or numbers unless you can do them properly.
• I thought Glen's notion of putting the medal back round Jill Scott's neck was a good one - except of course when he did that, the medal ended up very much higher than when she was awarded it.

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The Portraits and the Judging

Below is:

• who the sitter chose
• who the Judges shortlisted
• the artist who won this heat

Who the Sitter chose

I'm again using the Instagram posts of the three portraits for each sitter - which is a great way of comparing them - for the most part.

Paintings of Jimi Fumarewa by 
(top left) Jason Monrow
(bottom left) Minjoo Kim
(right) 

 Jimi chose the painting by Minjoo Kim.

"This is mind-blowing; it's so impressive!"  Jimi Fumarewa

Paintings of Lyall Hakaraia - by:
(top right) August Lamm
(bottom left) Jack Gavin
(bottom right) Helen Lee Robinson

Lyall chose the graphite drawing by Helen Lee Robinson.

Helen's been very successful at making me forget she has been drawing all day. There's something very, direct, very honest, highly observant. This is exactly what Lyall looked like today. I'm really pleasantly surprised by what she could do. Kate Bryan

Paintings of Jill Scott by:
(top left) Erin De Burca
(bottom left) Glen Gashi
(right) Sofia Laskari

Jill picked the painting by Sofia Laskari.

Interestingly, none of the artists chosen by the sitters were chosen by the Judges! 

So - on to the shortlist!

The Shortlist

I wrote down on the top of my notes, the artists who I thought were pretty certain to be shortlisted and I only got one right - albeit I was mainly going off self portraits and how well they got started!  

Which is sort of what I thought about this heat. It included people who should have done better. Or maybe that's artists who should have practiced more BEFORE the heat?

Kate Bryan said she was concerned half way through the day - and I think that's because some people were not coming through in the way they had hoped.

Interesting day, dictated somewhat by the sitters and the artist response on difficulty with them

A statement from Tai which made me wonder, to an extent, what we had not seen.

Whereas Kathleen made other very meaningful comments

It is a very difficult environment and we have to understand "promise" versus "compromise"  Kathleen Soriano

We've got three artists who adapted their styles well.  Kathleen Soriano

The shortlist for the place in the Semi Final comprised:

• Jack Gavin (who did 11 portraits while practising for the heat!)
• Jason Monroe (who adapted his style to the timescale of the heat)
• August Lamm (who was the only one who really went for it and painted most of Lyall - including his hands!)

PAOTY 2024 Episode 5 Winner

The winner of Episode 6 was August Lamm

August has pushed the boat out, gone for the full figure. this is a fabulous bit of painting

Tai Shan Shierenberg

August Lamm - Winner of Episode 6

 The paint is just gorgeous Kathleen Soriano

There is a freshness and liveliness to the portrait of Lyall that she made today 

Next Episode

The sitters for Episode 7 which will screened next Wednesday evening include two I like and one I don't.

• Heather Mills - a former model and animal rights activist who is most famous for being the ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartnery and throwing a jug of water over his solicitor in the High Court. I do hope she's not too mouthy or I will have to turn off - and you won't then get a review!
• Kevin McCloud - the presenter of Channel 4's Grand Designs - since 1999 - much loved by all those aspiring to live in nicer houses but terrified of the building costs! We've all watched his hair disappear - but I want to know how can he be 4+ years younger than me?
• Martha Kearney - a well known journalist and radio broadcaster used to the main presenter of BBC4's "The World at One" for 11 years and then the Today Programme. She stood down from broadcasting the news after the last General Election this summer - but continues to do nature programming.

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.