Review: Episode 5 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12) - after the accidental deletion!

We've reached the fifth episode of Series 12 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 and I'm beginning to wonder how many heats we're having. 

I'm told Episode 5 was in fact Heat 1. Why, you may ask, do they show them out of order...

The shortlisting in Episode 5 of Portrait Artist of the Year (Series 12)

Episode 5: The Sitters

The three sitters in the first episode are as follows:

• Emily Atack b.1989 - an English actress, comedian and television personality.
• Melvin Odoom b.1980 - a British radio DJ and television presenter.
• Max Beesley b.1971 an English actor and musician with many film credits

The sitters in Episode 5

Episode 5: The Artists

The Artists in Episode 5

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.

As always I've dug around online, and these profiles provide more information than the programme does.

The mini bio provided in the programme does not include all the relevant and rather important information about some of the participating artists.

Yet again ONLY TWO ARTISTS have surnames which begin with a letter in the second   half of the alphabet. Why is this? 

• Daniel Badger (Instagram) - a gardener from London who specialises in biro based drawings. He sketches in his spare time.
• Hannah Barker (Instagram) - an artist and a volunteer coordinator at a social enterprise from Leeds who draws people using pastel pencils, slowly building each portrait through layering, smudging, and erasing.
• Mario Cervantes (Instagram) - a fine art graduate who grew up in England and studied Fine Art at the Complutense University in Madrid (2009-13) and now lives in Glasgow. He paints entirely from life. One of his portraits was selected for the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2021. He also paints still life, landscapes and sport.
• Fiona Daly (Instagram) - a psychotherapist from Wicklow in Ireland She features twice in her self portrait at different ages. She studied studied Sculpture in the 1980s and went on to work her way up in the Irish Film Industry over about 25 years, to become a Production Designer. She then qualified as a Psychotherapist in 2012. She came to painting later in life and her portraiture took off during the PAOTY Online Sessions during the pandemic.
• Han Han (Instagram) - Originally from Shanghai, she has an MA in Fashion from the University of the Arts London. Han spent a decade in design before turning to painting in 2020. She is now a professional artist working primarily in portraiture and figurative painting and lives in London with her family. Her work has been shown with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. 
• David Maddock (Instagram) - a figurative painter from Leicester. He has degrees in Fine Art from Bristol and Goldsmith's College. While teaching, he completed a part-time History of Art masters degree at Leeds Metropolitan University and a part-time doctoral degree at Leicester University. His self portrait took him two weeks and he wanted to demonstrate his expressive painting style. He currently divides his time between painting, research, and teaching.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ruby Mitcham (@ruby_mitcham)

• Ruby Mitcham (Instagram) - a 17 year old sixth form student from Edinburgh who already paints professionally - painting on commission in her spare time. She is self taught. Her work has recently been selected for the Florence Biennale, has hung  in the Royal Scottish Academy and toured in the Scottish Portrait Awards. She is the youngest artist to have exhibited at the prestigious Society of Scottish Artists annual exhibition. She also has an interesting story - as told on her page dedicated to the competition on her website.

I had actually decided not to enter the competition this year. I didn’t want to rush into it and the task is quite daunting. My art is developing so quickly that even a few months seems to make a big difference. Then, one of the producers from Storyvault (the production company) emailed me inviting me to apply. I quickly put together a self-portrait while I was on a school exchange in Canada, figured out how to bring it home with me on the plane and sent in my application. It couldn’t have been much longer than a couple of weeks before I heard back from them telling me I’d been selected! Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year  on Ruby's website

• Lauren Ross (Instagram) - an art tutor and painter from Edinburgh. who first appeared in Series 2 of PAOTY. She also works as work as an English & maths tutor and as a High school mentor. She completed a foundation diploma in art & design at Edinburgh College and came back to art during the pandemic. She has also exhibited portraits with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Society of Women Artists
• Verity Ure-Jones (Instagram) - a portrait and figurative painter based in London who works primarily in oil paint and pastels on panel and paper. She won 2nd prize for the Windsor & Newton Young Artist Prize, was one of the final 115 (out of 13K) on the shortlist for the Jackson's Art prize and has been longlisted for The Cass Art Prize 2025
  
  

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Han Han (@han_han_art)

SUBSCRIBE IF YOU LIKE 'MAKING A MARK' 

- and want to keep up with my reviews

and get an email to your inbox every time I publish

Episode 5: Self-Portrait Submissions 

The self portrait wall - where you can see relative size and format

We had a bit more body this week - which made a major change from last week when it was only heads!

Plus we had a very unusual submission - a portrait by a woman of herself with decades between, as a diptych with the two joined visually by having the same towel in both

FORMAT

• Portrait format x 7
• Landscape x 1
• Panoramic diptych x 1 (i.e. a panoramic format plus a portrait format with an item in each linking on the edge where they join - VERY clever!)

Diptych by Fiona Daly
1) a landscape portrait of of herself as a child getting bathed in the wash basin
2) a portrait format self-portrait of herself today
the towel joins the two paintings together so you don't see the join!!
Apparently this is a commission process she offers
of bracketing a childhood pic with a current day image

SIZE: (this is size by my eye / "you know when you see it")

• Large x 3 (includes 1 as a diptych)
• Large/Medium x 2
• Medium x 1
• Small x 2
• Tiny x 1

SCOPE

Most ducked hands this week - which I think is silly. Why not take the time and use your self portrait to demonstrate you can do hands?

• full size or most of body (including hand) x 1 + 1 diptych
• head, upper torso and hand(s) x 2
• head and upper torso (no hands) x 1
• head and shoulders x 1 + 1 (diptych)
• head x 3

Episode 5: 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

You can apply again - even if you've appeared in a previous series!

Lauren Ross first appeared in Series 2 of Portrait Artist of the Year when she was just 18 - and the series followed a rather different process. Her artwork 10 years later demonstrates that it has evolved.

Maybe the programme is signalling that they'd like previous participants to apply again?

I went back and looked briefly at the Glasgow episode she appeared in - in 2013 - which had what seemed to be a very large number of participants. However the winner was Euan McClure who was somebody I recognised from being selected as a BP Portrait Award artist the same year.

Essential Tips and Reminders

We often see artists come to the heats with a slip of paper on which are written notes of what they need to focus on. 

• It provides something to keep you grounded if you panic. 
• It reminds you of stuff you might otherwise forget if flustered. 
• Even for the best artist it can provide that jolt, when you have set off on a specific track, of how to approach the next fork in the road.

These are Lauren Ross's Notes to herself. I think they appealed to the Judges.

Lauren's Art Tips

Artists in their Studios / Portrait of an Artist

Three of the self portraits in this heat/episode are of artists in their studios. It's a very familiar theme from past episodes and series.

This theme therefore presents an artist with a challenge. How do you avoid it looking like every other self portrait of artist in studio?

You can differentiate by:

• the size of the artist
• the angle of the perspective on yourself (i.e. what weird angle could you get your mirror / phone into) - or did you have help?
• the size of the support - this is a major opportunity to go big because you have complete control of your studio and you and can spend as long as you want on the self portrait!
• the items in your studio that you include - and what do they say about you?

What does your website say about you?

This question might be seen as a proxy for what do I notice about what has happened to the standard of the artists applying for this series. Read on and you will see what I mean

The thing I've noticed in this year's series generally is that while almost everybody has an Instagram account, there's a lot of artists who do NOT have a website.

Which is odd. That says to me you're 

• either very young 
• and/or very new to art 
• and/or not serious about your art. 
• Or you are very much an amateur and cannot see the point of having a website if your art isn't earning money.

Now you see why I've waited for an episode where all but one artist has a website!

While writing this section I pondered on whether I can ever remember anybody in the final - or any of the winners - who did NOT have a website. I drew a blank.

Which suggests to me that there's a lot of people who are now just participating "just for the experience" rather than competing to progress through the competition. Which is fine but must be pretty galling for the serious artists who were not selected for any of the heats. 

What's the implications of this? 

• It makes the task of choosing who goes in which heat more difficult! Sometimes you get heats where nearly all the artists are "so so" (I can name one but I won't) and other heats where you can get more stronger artists - and yet only one goes through. I very much thought this heat was leaning towards being one of those.
• It's also less likely to generate a great supply of artists of great merit to move forward generally - and in the past I've seen artists who progress well through this competition who go on to do extremely well in other competitions and exhibitions.

Overlay on the Home Page of Fiona Daly's website
Nothing like highlighting what you've been doing which is of note!

Back to the beginning. One of the things I do at the beginning of writing these reviews is:

• work out everybody's name and basic bio details from the programme
• look for their website
• look for their instagram account (see next theme)

I then look at your website to see what it says about you.

• There's what it says, generally in an "about me" page and 
• there's what it says without words. 

What do you paint? If you are focused on a whole range of subject matter that says to me you're an artist but not a portrait artist.  If you look at a professional portrait artist's website, the vast majority of artwork on the website is going to be drawings and paintings of people - from heads to sketches to above the waist portraits to whole body portraits - with and without context. That tells me you're a serious portrait artist. 

It's naive to think that the Judges do not look at your website and Instagram accounts. 

What does your Instagram account say about you?

The content of your Instagram account is a bit like a treasure trove for Sherlock Holmes. It tells us about your interests and how much you like to share. 

It tells me how much you like to sketch / draw / paint people and how often you do it. 

It signals to me very clearly whether or not you are serious about portraiture. 

I'm not surprised that artists get approached after the programme team have reviewed their Instagram online.

However, one artist in this episode had obviously set up an Instagram account when the artist participated in the heats. It had two posts and that's it. 

Juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary or "modern and not so modern"

Self portrait by Lauren Ross

During the discussion of the self portraits, this one was highlighted because of the contrast between traditional and contemporary

Creating an apparent discontinuity within a self portrait by creating a portrait which seems to echo traditional poses from portraits in the past with contemporary features such as headphones is very much going to capture the Judges's collective eyes.

It's one very good way of getting noticed.  

• I think it works best if the discontinuity isn't "in your face" so much as something you notice slowly. 
• There again, depending on how long is spent actually looking at portraits it could be easy to pass over it if you make it more low key....

So something worth pondering on....

For me it's maybe about including the headphones on the head of the sitter - but maybe not making them bright blue?  There again that particular blue crops up time and again in historical portraits of women. See what I mean?

Very dark paintings

Very definitely eye-catching but not something I would recommend anybody do in a filming situation in a heat - unless they've done it before and know exactly what they are doing.

Unusual Media and Equipment

One way of getting the attention of Judges is to produce a portrait in a medium which seems unfamilar to the Judges - such as 

• the wood support used by Verity Ure-Jones - who liked it because she starts with a midtone. I'm sat wondering what the portraits look like after six months when the paint has sunk into the wood. Note there is absolutely nothing unusual about painting in oil on wood except for the fact she hasn't used an under-painting to seal the wood.

Painting portraits on wood without sealing it first will cause the paint to absorb unevenly, resulting in a blotchy, dull appearance and a rough texture. For oil paintings, this is particularly damaging, as the oil will degrade the wood and the portrait over time. Google AI (my "go to" for a quick quotable answer)

• the biro as used by Daniel Badger. Essentially, you need complete mastery of your medium to flummox them!
• the brush holder - salvaged and drilled by Fiona Daly. As she explained the fresh clean brushes go inthe centre and the used brushes are put back into the holes she drilled around the vase. I thought it a very neat idea!

Fiona Daly's brush container

Working to Scale

For many artists working to scale involves gridding up to get down the outline which helps keep aspects of the individual in the right place and to scale. 

That works IF you're working from a photo.

If you're working from life, you MUST measure!  Unless you want to acquire or reconstruct  one of the artifacts from the past.  The method for measuring is usually referred to as sight size and most portrait artists who paint from life are familiar with it.

Woodcut by Albrecht Durer of drawing using a physical grid between artist and artist's model

However there's also the matter of 

• scaling the portrait for the size of the support you have brought to work on. A portrait where the sitter looks squashed or not set up in the right place on the support looks very odd. You can have lots of white or empty space in a portrait - but it does need to be a deliberate design decision and not what happens when you don't think for too long about what goes where.
• Scaling the head in relation to how much else of the body you have chosen to portray. Aiming to include the hands on your support is a very laudable aim. But you MUST measure and locate right from the start. A portrait where the sitter seems to have arms which are far too short just looks really odd. (Oddly I don't think the Judges mentioned this and stuck to the likeness)

A Mock "Portrait Artist of the Year" Day

Ruby gave herself a mock up of the heat on the day before. Her parents substituted for Judges walking around and asking her questions about what she was doing and can she explain her approach.

I've know lots of artists practice for the limited timescale for the completion of the heat portrait. I cannot remember anybody who got people to pretend to be judges - but it seems like a very sensible idea, especially for one so young.

Background - first or last?

We saw two different approaches in this episode to when you paint the background i.e. before or after you paint the sitter. It's an aspect which is worth studying this heat again to see which approach worked best.

In Ruby's opinion, if you put the background in first, then you can make all your judgements about how skin relates to the background as you develop the portraits.

Whereas if you introduce the colour of the background after you begin to complete the portrait, and don't test out first what it might look like, you may then find that your portrait  needs lots of small adjustments! 

I found it absolutely fascinating to watch Ruby complete her portrait from the outside in i.e. background first, then hair and neck, then outer structure of the head and finally the face. Tonally it was very good. Pity she didn't quite get the likeness - but it was close.  

Episode 5: The Portraits and the Judging

Episode 5: Waiting to hear the shortlist

Who the sitters chose

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!

Heat portraits of Emily Atack- by three women
(top right) Han Han
(bottom left) Ruby Mitcham (bottom right) Verity Ure-Jones

Emily Attack chose the portrait by Ruby Mitcham (bottom left).
I had a slight sense that this was a gesture of support for a young artist starting out. Frankly I don't think Ruby needed it! :) She's a very confident and focused young artist and I expect to hear about her again in the future. 

Heat Portraits of Melvin Odoom
(left) David Maddock (this is heavily cropped)
(top right) Lauren Ross (bottom right) Daniel Badger

Melvin Odoom indicated that he loved elements of each one - but chose the biro portrait by Daniel Badger (bottom right). He admired the beard and I think he possibly felt it was also the one which looked most recognisably like him - in his eyes. 

Heat Portraits of Max Beasley
(Top left) Fiona Daly (Bottom Right) Hannah Barker
(right) Mario Cervantes

Max Beasley indicated he was "lost for words" but chose the portrait by Fiona Daly (top left)

I noted that Mario probably ruled himself out as the arms were far too short. Hannah's portrait suggested a bit of frivolity with some marked "side eye".  Humour in a portrait is very unusual.

However for me, Fiona's was definitely the best portrait of this section. She stuck to just a head but 'elevated' it and he looked alive. Comments were passed by the presenter that this looked like the sort of image which becomes an election poster!

The Shortlist

The shortlisted artists were

• Fiona Daly
• Lauren Ross
• Han Han

Bear in mind that yet again, this selection is generated by both the self portrait AND the heat portrating.

Below are the three finalists's paintings lined up next to one another. 

Frankly I think the background they showed them against was a complete abortion - both for the display of the finalists paintings and for any artist to have to look at while trying to paint.

Paintings by the Shortlist - (left) self portrait (right) heat portrait
Left to right: Fiona Daly, Han Han, Lauren Ross

Next the paintings by each shortlisted artist - the self portrait and heat painting - shown all together - with commentary from the Judges and me.

It was noted that - at last - each sitter had a portrait shortlisted. More commonly we have seen two from one sitter and none from another.

Kathleen Soriano made the important point that with both Fiona and Lauren you could see quite clearly where any commission painting in the future might be starting from - whereas there was a discontuity in Han Han's portraits between the self portrait and the heat painting. Almost as if they had been painted by different artists. (see the relevant image below)

But, I might add, for the 3/4 view of the head from the right - which is identical in both portraits.

The importance of this point for aspiring PAOTY artists in the future is that issue of being able to see a clear relationship between the self portrait - which they did not see you paint - and the heat painting, painted in front of them. 

The obvious implication is that people however long they take to paint their self portrait, they need to develop and practice a shorthand faster version - which can help produce a portrait in less than 4 hours that demonstrates a very clear relationship between the SP and the Heat.

Fiona Daly

Fiona Daly - self portrait (diptych at different ages) and heat painting

The Judges liked Fiona's fresh and vigorous approach to painting which they suggested came through in her brushstrokes. She also provides a lovely explanation of how the light works in relation to the sitter

For me, I just thought Fiona achieved really a great likeness of both herself and her sitter. The upward tilt of the head of both herself and her sitter is engaging. 

Her paintings made me think of a less "finished" version  of Wendy Barratt who won in 2023.

Speaking personally, I was hoping Fiona won. It seemed to me that she brought a new and fresh pschological approach to her portrait painting which seemed like it might produce an excellent commission. I'm not sure this thought got considered by the Judges. 

Lauren Ross

Lauren Ross (self portrait and heat painting)

Tai suggested that Lauren had brought Melvin to life. He also found the device of the braclet as a halo to be rather beautiful - as did I.

I liked Melvins head but from the neck down I was less impressed. 

There again she had demonstrated her ability to paint in her own self portrait which was complex and well composed and well balanced in terms of foreground, midground and background. 

I get the impression Lauren likes curvy things (note the curves in the SP).

Han Han

Han Han (self portrait and heat painting)

I think the Judges were impressed by Han Han's ability to paint - as very clearly demonstrated in her self portrait.

I think she came unstuck because she had "one of those days".  Emily's face was both too ruddy and too muddy. I wonder how many four hour paintings she had painted in preparation for the heat.

The other thing I found odd is that both Han and Emily had the same expression from a head turned in the same way. It just seemed odd and incidentally served to highlight the differences in the quality of the painting between SP and Heat paintings.

I also think if she'd left the background out and just focused on the head, she'd have produced a cleaner, more focused portrait of Emily - and we might have had a different heat winner.

PAOTY 2025: Episode 5 Winner

Lauren Ross with part of her portrait of Melvin Odoom

The winner was Lauren Ross. 

The Judges considered that she created a sensitive work with storytelling and a very well-considered luminous portrait of Melvin.

It wouldn't have been my first choice but I understand their rationale. 

The lesson aspiring participants might want to take away is it really pays to bring along a list of art tips for yourself - to keep focused and produce your best work!

Next Episode

Episode 6 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 features nine artists painting (to be announced)

  

Reference: Previous posts about Portrait Artist of the Year

Series 12:

• Start date for Portrait Artist of the Year Series 12
• Review: Episode 1 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12)
• Review: Episode 2 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12)
• Review: Episode 3 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12)
• Review: Episode 4 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12)

Website: Sky Arts Artist of the Year