....and so another series begins. At 8pm on Wednesday 1st October, the first episode of the brand new series 12 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 was screened by Sky Arts on Sky, Freeview and Now TV.
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| Portrait Artist of the Year - Series 12 (2025) |
Except it was actually available earlier online and I watched it in the afternoon and then started this review.
Each episode of Series Twelve is always repeated at 7pm the following night on Sky Arts.
What qualifies me to review this series? Well.... I've reviewed lots of exhibitions and
lots of art on television programmes in the last 20 years and every episode of every series of Portrait Artist of the Year since Series
4 in 2018.
If you've not yet watched and are not familiar with my posts, this review
continues in the same pattern as all the reviews I've written for the last
eight series.
- The Competition
- Then Commission
- The Judges
- The sitters
- The artists
- Self-portrait submissions
- Themes observed during the episode - and observations on different approaches
- Portraits and the Judging
- Shortlist
- The winner
- Next episode
The Portrait Artist of the Year Competition
The competition
The format is the same as always
- eight heats - with nine artists in each heat, creating portraits in four hours working three artists to one (usually celebrity) sitter
- semi finals
- finals
- commission / the winner's story
The Commission
This year's portrait commission is for The Royal Society – the world’s oldest continuously operating scientific academy and home to leading scientists. It will mark the 80th anniversary in 2025 of the election of the first women Professors as members of the Royal Society. The sitter will be the mathematician and broadcaster Professor Hannah Fry who was awarded the Royal Society's David Attenborough Award and Lecture 2024 in recognition of her significant work in public engagement with science and for her prolific role in popularising mathematics. She is also the Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
That should present some challenges around providing context in the background!
The Judges
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| (L to R) Kathleen Soriano, Tai-Shan Shierenberg and Kate Bryan with the presenter Stephen Mangan |
As always the Judges for the series are the same as they've been from the
beginning:
- Kathleen Soriano - who describes herself as Curator, Telly person, Museum/Gallery Advisor/Consultant, Qualified Coach, Chair Liverpool Biennial, Chair Art UK, National Trust Specialist Advisor
- Kate Bryan - who describes herself as Art Addict. Art TV presenter, curator, writer & mentor. Chief Art Director @sohohouse (She continues to do PAOTY but has bowed out of hiking around the UK for LAOTY)
- Tai-Shan Shierenberg - the British painter (I've put the link to his 2024 page of Heads new and old on his website)
I have however noticed a new and renewed respect for the concept of "likeness"
in this first episode - of which more later.
Episode 1: The Sitters
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| Keep these faces in mind when you get to the portraits produced! |
The three sitters in the first episode are as follows:
- Alex Jones (top right) - an author, podcaster and presenter of "The One Show" on BBC1
- Kyla Harris (bottom right) - a filmmaker, writer and activist who is also tetraplegic and uses a raised power chair. She is probably best known for co-creating and co-writing"We might regret this", on BBC2/iPlayer, which she also acted in and produced.
- Yungblud (Bottom left) - is an English singer, songwriter and actor who has had two UK #1 albums and over 6 billion Spotify streams
In general, I find that the people in the first episode very often have
something they want to promote around the time of the broadcast. Not
that they are naff enough to do so on the programme - but it raises their
profile and helps to get people looking at who they are and what they do.
Episode 1: The Artists
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The artists in Episode 1 on the steps of Battersea Arts Centre where the knockout heats are held |
As always I've dug around online, and these profiles provide more information than the programme does.
The mini bio provided in the programme skips over some rather important information about some of the participating artists.
- Edie Bound (Instagram) - b.2002 is originally from Wiltshire but now lives in South London. She did a foundation year at Camberwell School of Art and then chose to work at a ceramic studio whilst pursuing oil painting in her free time.
- Natalie Charles (Instagram) - an artist based in London. She is a a Drawing Year 2023/4 alumnus from the Royal Drawing School. In 2025, she was selected for RBA Rising Stars, the Delphian Gallery Open Call and the Richard Ford Award, a funded residency at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
- Ian Dawber (Instagram) - He graduated from Wigan Art School in 1978 and then worked as a professional Graphic Designer/Illustrator in both Liverpool and Manchester agencies. He took up painting in later life and is an an elected member of the Society of Illustrators, Artist and Designers attaining Fellow membership. His portfolio includes an excellent portrait of Lenny Henry during the world record attempt. (He needs a proper website!)
- Ephraim Haywood (Instagram) - a charity worker from South London who specialises in drawing portraits and plants. (He's very good at the latter) His self portrait involved merging three different drawings of himself.
- Alice Hesketh (Instagram | Facebook)- very succinct to the point website tells me that she is
- a graduate of Camberwell College of Art
- a fine artist who specialises in contemporary figurative paintings and drawings.
- She has a studio in Eastbourne where she paints and teaches small art classes.
- She also hosts portrait workshops, demos and events in and around East Sussex.
- Angel Mitov (Instagram) - a self-taught tattoo artist from Bulgaria - who speacialises in realistic tattoos - who came to the UK to study art in Glasgow
- Sonya Watt - an Executive Assistant from North London
- David Weekes (Instagram) - a retired financier from London who works solely from observation. He studied full time at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and completed a diploma in portraiture (with a portfolio that was highly commended by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters). He now works as an artist full time from a studio in South East London and enjoys painting a range of subject matter
Participation is not for the shy or those who don't like people looking directly over their shoulder! This heat looked a lot more crowded than normal.
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| Sonya Watt working on her painting of Alex Jones - with the crowd right behind her and a camera just behind her right ear! |
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Episode 1: Self-Portrait Submissions
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| The Self Portraits being reviewed by the Judges before the filming starts |
As always I review the submissions for format and quality. As I said last
year
For me, having watched this programme for a long time, the conclusion I've reached is that your self portrait is actually what's vitally important to who wins a heat and who wins the competition. You can start working out who's got a good chance of winning after they've reviewed the self portraits
Review: Episode 1 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2024 (Series 11)
It's my very strong recommendation that, if you can, you submit a painting as if you were showing somebody an example of what you can do to get a commission i.e. not a sketch or a study - it needs to be a proper self portrait painting of a decent size.
However do watch this episode for why what I say sometimes seems completely irrelevant!
FORMAT
- Portrait format x 8
- Square x
- Tondo x 1 (round artwork)
SIZE: (this is size by my eye / "you know when you see it")
- Large x 2
- Large/Medium x 1
- Medium x 5
- Tiny x 1
SCOPE
- full size or most of body (including hand) x 1
- head, upper torso and hand(s) x 1
- head and upper torso (no hands) x 1
- head and shoulders x 3
- head x 2
Episode 1: Themes
- 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
The Importance of Likeness AND Originality
I've tended to associate the reason why it became a much more mentioned aspect of judging, with the fact so very many people kept criticising the Judges for wanting an emphasis on contemporary art while apparently forgetting that this is actually a competition about finding people who can create a good portrait.
It's true to say that the Judges stance seems to be it cannot just be a hyper realistic portrait with no contemporary art "chops". Or as Kate put it very early on in this episode while considering the self portraits - specifically about the self portrait by Ellis King
"If you can really paint in this photorealistic way, you've got to find something original to do with it, you've got to push the boundaries" Kate Bryan
That in essence is it.
- achieve a good likeness (i.e. contemporary approaches don't cut it if it doesn't look like the person)
- AND ideally be original in your approach. Ensure that you bring yourself to the act of creating art. Make it yours - and not anybody else's (don't copy the style of other artists).
Painting from Life versus Painting from a Photo
While you definitely need devices and photos for those times during the heats when other people get in the way of your view of the model, on the whole one would hope people would be painting from life.
However, the artists are much further away friom their sitter than they would be if it was just the two of them.
So it's always impressive to see an artist painting mainly from life and cracking on to create a great portrait.
The distance from the subject - and your eyesight!
The distance from the subject is a perennial topic - given it is so much more than is typical for most portrait painters. However this episode threw up one NEW ISSUE for me which I think is worth highlighting.
One of the artists always works from observation and is a good artist. However he failed to capture a likeness which seemed to be about something other than competence. I wondered if he had had his eyes tested recently and/or considered beforehand if he needed the assistance of glasses which would enable him to see his subject clearly at what is a much bigger distance than that most portrait painters are used to.
I'd highly recommend that all artists wishing to work solely from observation obtain the distance from artist to sitter in the "segments" and then get their eyes tested for clarity at that distance!!
The Importance of Mouths
I don't think I've ever watched a programme before which had so many references to mouths and how well or otherwise they were painted!
Normally people go on and on about the eyes. Now and again we remember the old adage
"A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth" attributed to the famous portrait artist John Singer SargentOne view is that we rarely see complete perfection in anybody's face and that a true likeness involves a subtle imperfection, often in the mouth, that adds to the portrait's character and realism. This avoids a perfect, lifeless "Barbie Doll" representation.
Another perspective is that many artists are not very good at painting mouths - and hence what is "wrong with the mouth" has not always been deliberate!
So it's a saying which can be taken two ways.
Tai made the comment
"Likeness sits at the mouth, we communicate with our mouth"
If you're an aspiring heat participant, you might want to check out how good you are painting mouths. This particular heat was one where some got the mouths very wrong.
Art Materials
I like to highlight
new art materials I see which I've not seen "in use" before
(i.e. there's a lot of difference between seeing something online
or in a shop and actually seeing it being used) and comment on whether or not they appear to be helpful and something people might want to think about.
I saw a very nifty aid for speeding up the drawing of grid lines - being used by Ellis King. Below you can see her drawing her lines using the grid and then how this is then used to hand draw a gridded photo to the gridded support.
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| The grid aid |
Here is her gridded head in front of her gridded screen which she was working from. The point of highlighting this is the speed at which she got her grid done. It removes the necessity to measure and carefully mark up all the points and then rule lines. She was doing this on the easel.
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| Two gridded heads of Alex Jones - by Ellis King |
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| Derwent Graphitint XL Blocks |
For me, these would be an excellent tool for covering large surfaces
very fast. They seemed to me to be wasted on such a small tondo
support. I know I used to produce much better drawings in the same
sort of 4 hour time slot when I used my Unison Pastels (similar size)
on large sized supports (66 cm x 50 cm). It means you use your whole
arm rather than just your fingers.
I was very surprised to learn that Kathleen Soriano had never ever seen an artist using a "pencil extension" before. It's a simple device that allows the artist to hold the pencil away from the business extend which allows for more ease of movement and less tight marks. There are many different pencil extensions available and the link is to a post about various different types from a reputable supplier.
The Portraits and the Judging
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| The start of the judging for the judges |
Who the sitters chose
If the programme's social media people do what they did last year
and produce Instagram posts with all the paintings of each sitter, I will insert
them here so you can see them all for yourself.
Otherwise you get to
see them individually but never together - except for a brief two
seconds in each programme as they turn their easels around. I think it's only when you see them all together that you
understand some of the judgements being made.
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| a two second shot of the Kyla Harris segment |
Below you can see all the portraits grouped according to the sitter - which I think are the most useful photos provided by Sky Arts. Put them together and those who need to be shortlisted shout out!
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| Portraits of Alex Jones IMO two were getting there but nobody captured her properly |
Alex Jones chose the very spare (Julian Opie influenced?)
portrait by Ellis King (top right above). If truth be told I think this was the weakest of the three
"segments" (and none werre shortlisted) and consequently I spent most of my time admiring Alex
Jones's facility with words when commenting on the different paintings.
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| Portraits of Kyla Harris (top two by Ian Dawber and Alice Hesketh were shortlisted) |
Kyla Harris chose Ian Dawber's painting - because it made her
cry and then that made Ian cry. She did however very much appreciate the way that Alice Hesketh had portrayed the sheer gause of her arms and upper chest.
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| Portraits of Yungblud Bottom left by Edie Bound was shortlisted |
Yungblud chose the portrait by Angel Mitov as
being style of painting he liked the best and the one which would fit in best at home.
"It will go good next to the gargoyles"
This was a stronger section but I thought both Angel and Ephraim got some but not all of the likeness
The portrait by Edie Bound was certainly by far the best likeness in this section and the entire show - and it's very difficult to beat a really good likeness.TIP for if you visit the heats. You can see everybody best if you place yourself at the extreme left or right of the segment. If you line up in the middle all you ever see is the backs of paintings and the backs of heads
The Shortlist
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Artists at the Shortlisting PAOTY Series 12 Episode 1 |
The shortlisted artists were
- Ian Dawber
- Alice Hesketh
- Edie Maund
These are their paintings - the self portrait and heat painting - shown all together. Note Alice's paintings were significantly bigger than those by Ian and Edie, with the size suiting her style.
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| Self Portrait and Heat Painting by each of the shortlisted artists (L to R) Ian Dawber, Edie Bound and Alice Hesketh |
Ian Dawber
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| Self portrait and heat painting by Ian Dawber |
Ian struck me as being a very competent painter. He was a bit different - looking straight at the viewer in his self portrait, with an unusual turquoise background which worked well with flesh colour (although not as well as Holbein's Teal)
The Judges thoight that Ian used very little to say a lot.
I'd have liked him to paint bigger and see whether his portraits got better or worse.
The winner was Edie Baund.
I had a feeling it might be from the point when Tai called her very
small self-portrait "a gem" right back at the beginning of the programme.
Alice Hesketh
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| Self portrait and heat painting by Alice Hesketh |
(Apologies to Alice whose commentary was omitted when this was first published - for a technical reason)
I think Alice is good at capturing likeness and surfaces, even though she distorts both in terms of proportion and colour (i.e. Kyla has black hair and was dressed all in black and her boobs were not quite so low slung!). The painting of the gauze on her chest and sleeves was highlighted as very effective.
I like the size she works at which, to me, says she is serious about portraiture. I'd like her better if she increased the accuracy on proportions and ever so slightly damped down the use of colour (as in "what's that yellow patch top left about?")
Edie Baund
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| Self portrait and heat painting by Edie Bound |
Tai-Shan thought the self portrait to be a little gem. Edie produced a very small but extremely competent self portrait. The orange carried over into her heat painting. It catches the eye like red but is much less wearing on the eye.
Tai was also a big fan of the minimal mark-making in the heat painting and the fact that, after starting out with the portrait upside down (to mark out the big shapes and tones) she caught the likeness very fast.
"I'm always impressed when young artists go out on a limb and still nail the likeness"I thought she was very clearly the only artist to have a very good likeness from early one. The fact that her particular method of mark-making was not boring made the end result a racing certainty.
PAOTY 2025 Episode 1 Winner
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| Waiting to here who has won |
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| Edie Bound (centre) was the winner |
I thought she was a very worthy winner. Her portrait was outstanding both as a very good likeness and as a piece of contemporary art.
More importantly, it seems from comments on social media everybody else thought likewise!
So we have a first - everybody agreed that the Judges get it absolutely right in the first episode.
I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see her in the Final. She has expertise, confidence and a fluidity of style which enables her to deliver in four hours.
On her website it also says, in an entertaining "about" piece
In addition, Edie also features in the upcoming series of Sky Portrait Artist of the Year, where she absolutely smashed it, omg she was so good, you should commission her before she starts charging millions and millions of pounds for a painting, she would love to paint you!You can see more of her paintings here
Next Episode
The sitters for Episode 2 are Si King, Elif Shafak, Joe Marler. I've
heard of precisely one of them (i.e. the chef)!
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