This review follows the normal order of my reviews - with one significant deviation for the person and the paintings that nearly all the public think should have won.
The other major deviation is that there is no pic of all the artists lined up and looking to their right to the Judges because - for the first time in a very long time - there was none in the programme.
Here they are - with no faces - from the other angle! (Note to Director: we ALL like to see their faces in the normal line up shot! What happened?)
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| The artists line up in front of their self portraits for the shortlisting announcement. |
Episode 6: The Sitters
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| Sitters in Episode 6 Beth Rigby (top right) Gabby Logan (bottom left) and Shane Lynch (bottom right) |
The three sitters in the first episode are as follows:
- Beth Rigby - Journalist and Political Editor for Sky News and co-host of the podcast Electoral Dysfunction (which I listen to a lot). She had brought a pen which jer brother gave her and a small notepad of the sort journalists use. (You can also watch it on YouTube)
Rigby is known for "her trademark dark bob and red lipstick, her distinctive diction and her persistent questioning of senior politicians" Wikipedia
- Gabby Logan - a Welsh television and radio sports presenter, and a former rhythmic gymnast who represented Wales and Great Britain. Her special item was her 50th birthday present - a black standard poodle called Maverick.
- Shane Lynch - an Irish singer, best known as a member of Boyzone. He's also well known for his tattoos and piercings. Latterly he has pursued his interest in racing cars which he has done for 30 years and has appeared in various television programmes. He brought one of his helmets
Episode 6: The Artists
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| The Artists in Episode 6 after they had finished and been banished to the outside so the artists can judge and they can get their photo taken together |
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.
- Emma Alexandra (Instagram) - a contemporary artist who works in a variety of mediums from Aotearoa New Zealand. The last few years she has been living between Italy and UK. She now lives in Bath.
- Laura Cronin (Instagram) - full time professional portrait artist who was born and brought up in Dublin. Studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York. When she returned to Ireland, she initially worked as an illustrator and did regular drawings and paintings for the two national newspapers- weekly portraits for The Irish Times and court drawings for The Independent. She has had a number of successful solo shows in Ireland and London - and her first in Dublin sold out. She is married with two daughters and a son.
- Thalia Elliot - From Sunderland. Currently studying Fine Art and Textiles at Newcastle University. (If you know Thalia and she has sites please get her to tell me about them!)
- John Matta (Instagram) - a motion graphics designer and musician located in Suffolk. He is also an artist inspired by the timeless beauty and craftsmanship of the Old Masters.
- Robert McLeod (Instagram) - Currently a third year student studying for a degree in fine art at Salford School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology where he has been winning prizes two years in a row! His university also featured him on their website.
- Lizzie Patterson (Instagram) - She describes herself as a creative who works across the mediums of art and photography. As a contemporary figurative artist, she creates large-scale, life-size portraits that celebrate colour, character, and connection. She is based near Guildford in Surrey.
- Rick Roberts (Instagram) - a painter and decorator from Ashton Under Lyme. He has worked as a life model and as an art technician.
- Ash Tyson (Instagram) - She lives and works in London as an illustrator and a tattoo artist (for 10 years). She has a love hate relationship with the biro she uses for drawing.
- Uthman Wahab (Instagram) - born in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria in 1983 and grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds a higher diploma degree in Fine Art from the School of Art, Design and Printing, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. He is a multidisciplinary artist, who lives and work between Lagos Nigeria and Kent in the UK. He has an overarching interest in social phenomenon; yet, he is not concerned with a consistent use of medium or even singular aesthetic style. His work seeks to challenge perceptions and foster dialogue around issues of faith, tradition, and community, particularly within the context of African and Islamic identities. (His about page is more comprehensive and impressive than those of most artists)
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Episode 6: Self-Portrait Submissions
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| Judges viewing the Self Portrait Wall |
FORMAT
- Portrait format x 5
- Square x 1
- Landscape x 1
- Tondo x 2
SIZE: (this is size by my eye / "you know when you see it")
- Large x 1
- Large/Medium x 3
- Medium x 2
- Small x 3
SCOPE
- full size or most of body (including hand) x 2
- head, upper torso and hand(s) x 3 - people have been reading my blog posts!
- head and upper torso (no hands) x 1
- head and shoulders x 2
- head x 1
Fewer head only / head and shoulder self portraits in this episode. to get five of the nine self portraits either full size or with upper torso and hands is quite remarkable. (However this did not include the eventual winner)
Episode 6: 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
"Heads" versus "Heads and Hands"
Very many artists when tackling portraits of a live sitter in the heat opt to do a head or head and shoulders. Their reasoning being they'd rather focus on getting the likeness right and demonstrating what they can do then attempt too much and mess it up.
Which is one of the reasons I bang on and on and on about the importance of using your self portrait to demonstrate that you can paint hands and not just a head.
Hands are much more difficult than heads.
- Heads have a sort of routine to them if you learn about the basic dimensions
- but hands will mess you up every time! There are just so many poses they can be in!
What is absolutely fascinating about this heat is that SIX of the nine artists attempted hands in the heat.
That's a bit like saying, the other three counted themselves out if they hadn't done hands at either self portrait or heat stage.
"We need more likeness"
Said by one of the Judges at one stage during this episode. Do they mean it? This wasn't the way they acted however at the end of the day.
One of the things that is critically important when running any competition is to be very clear about what makes a winner.
It's a truism that getting a likeness is very important in portraiture. However artists can do this in different ways and there are many styles which can be used to create a likeness.
One style they emphatically do not like is one characterised as "too caricature and cartoon" - which is often what people who have a strong bias towards illustration can produce on occasion.
What's very disconcerting is when the Judges appear blind to a good likeness by an accomplished portrait painter at the end of the day.
Switching Media
Does demonstrating that you have a facility with different media help you?
I'm not sure it matters one way or another. Demonstrating that you can know your media well and what it can do and then using it in a way which best suits your portrait is what really matters
I'm not sure it matters one way or another. Demonstrating that you can know your media well and what it can do and then using it in a way which best suits your portrait is what really matters
Delivering a well developed oil painting self portrait - and then switching to charcoal to do a drawing for the heat is perfectly acceptable. Working the other way around seems odd to me.
Unfinished Artwork: Is this inevitable or does it reflect poor planning and lack of practice?
Delivering good artwork in 4 hours is the task set for the artists. Many artists practice a LOT before their heat in terms of achieving a finished portrait in four hours.
If you want a career as an artist or to make progress in your artistic career, you need to tackle a heat in much the same way you would for anything else you want to achieve. Work at it and practice.
You have to work out IN ADVANCE and know:
- which part of the process is going to take you the longest?
- how to create the essence of what you can do if you normally take a lot longer?
- how you can short cut your normal process to produce something good?
- how to save time i.e. just how important is that background compared to getting proportions and likeness right?
- what's the best size to for you to work fast?
- do not assume this is small - working small normally takes more time than working on a larger support
- working bigger means you don't get tight and it's much easier to make small adjustments to recover a likeness
- how you can eliminate queries about your artwork - by addressing them through your self portrait
Writing yourself tips and reminders can n very valuable
Working out a timeline can keep you focused if you are the sort of person who is apt to lose track of time.
Episode 6: The Portraits and the Judging
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| The composite of composites - matched with the sitters faces Makes it easier to see who caught a likeness and who didn't. |
I tried something new this week. Took a bit of time to work out how to do it. Above is the result of creating a composite image of the composite images of the sitters and then the three portraits by the artists assigned to the sitters.
You can see them in more detail below.
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 it's much easier to see those that should be shortlisted. Although whether they are is not always the case - as in this programme.
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| Heat Portraits of Beth Rigby by Emma Alexandra (top); Thalia Elliott (bottom left) and Uhtman Wahab (bottom right) |
Beth Rigby picked the portrait by Emma Alexandra (at the top above) - and I got the impression that she thought that Emma had caught a younger version of her showing the softer side of her personality.
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| Heat Portraits of Shane Lynch by: Laura Cronin (top left); John Matta (top right) and Ash Tyson (bottom - in biro) |
Shane Lynch chose the portrait by Irish woman Laura Cronin. I'm sure having the same nationality counted for something - but she also did do the best portrait of him!
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| Heat Portraits of Gabby Logan by: Robert McLeod (top right) Lizzie Patterson (bottom left) and Rick Roberts (bottom right) |
Gabby was torn between the two poodle portraits (so smart artists who recognise an artist is not going to bring her poodle and then go home without a portrait of him!)
Gabby Logan chose Lizzie Patterson's portrait which included a red collage shape for Maverick the Poodle. Lizzie's portrait also had a very good likeness of a particular expression on Gabby's face.
There is no question with this episode. The viewing public are emphatic the Judges got it WRONG on two counts:
I'm inclined to think it's possible people may have been reading my blog post reviews!
The Shortlist
- There are a fair number who didn't reckon that ANY of the Beth Rigby portraits deserved to be shortlisted. I think they're wrong on that count. I think Thalia earned her place when combined with her self portrait
- A fair few are apoplectic about the fact Laura Cronin was not shortlisted. Most of rest identified this as being their best portrait.
I'll comment more below - AND include more about the artist who the general consensus thought should have won. This is what one of my followers thinks
I don't know what the judges were thinking.. 3 of the same sitter and none of them looked like her.......something is going on her
I'm not going to even try and render the Judges justifications for what they did - because they got it WRONG! As in, if you are selecting an artist to produce a "public commission for an important entity" then you need to select an artist who is going to do the model justice and the public are going to be pleased by the outcome. I've heard nothing in terms of their thinking which satisfies that criteria. Indeed I have a suspicion of an explanation which I won't make public on here - but if you see me ask me!
The shortlisted artists were
- Thalia Elliot
- Ufrun Wahan
- Emma Alexandra
These are their paintings - the self portrait and heat painting - shown all together.
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| Self Portrait and Heat portrait by shortlisted artists |
What I noticed in particular when reviewing the three sets of two paintings (self portrait and heat) was that each and every artist in this segment had done her hands. Plus not just her hands - her hands holding her pen - which reminds us that she is a journalist and this was an important item to her.
If you then compare to the rest of the heat paintings in this episode, you can count and see that six of the nine artists had included hands in their heat portraits.
Thalia Elliott
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| Self portrait and portrait of Beth Rigby by Thalia Elliott |
For me, these were two portraits which intrigued and, I thought, displayed good judgement in terms of what to tackle and how to approach the subject.
Thalia was one of two in this heat who went for "the whole person self portrait" - and included both hands in different postures.
Her portrait of Beth Rigby was small - much smaller than the two other portraits of Beth - but again included both hands.
If I were to be critical, it would be that I'd have preferred to see a bigger self portrait to see what she can do and how she approaches "going big". I am emphatically NOT a fan of artists who think they can win a competition for a £10,000 portrait commission - and then deliver a modest sized portrait - which has happened in the past.
However Thalia is a student and I think she will have been delighted just to be shortlisted and never ever thought she would win.
I'd have shortlisted her - it's a good pair of paintings and she got a convincing likeness in stature and posture in both. My recommendation would be - you have talent, and now need to be braver and more confident - and go bigger!
Ufrun Wahan
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| Self Portrait and Heat Portrait by Ufrun Wahad |
The head in the heat portrait has a look of Beth Rigby - but there is no getting away from the "man mountain" shoulders and arms. If they were actually in proportion, her hands would be down near her knees when she stood up.
The thing is Ufrun is an Islamic artist and it's very obvious from his website that his faith, country and culture mean an awful lot to him. It's what he's about.
- My first thought was why is he taking part in a portrait competition?
- My second was that it was very unlikely that he'd painted a woman
Why? You may well ask. Well the answer is I got my education on drawing and painting muslims from a great bunch of kids in a mountain village in Kintamani in the central highlands of Bali. I was told by a very serious young girl that it was absolutely forbidden to draw or paint the boys I was drawing. They hadn't objected - they were completely intrigued with what I was doing. She was very serious and of course I stopped straight away. They did however stop to watch me draw and paint one of my fellow artists - because kids are kids!
If you look up "Islam and painting portraits" Google AI will tell you
Painting portraits of living beings is generally considered forbidden in Islam due to religious prohibitions against creating images that imitate Allah's creation. These rules are based on sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, which state that those who create such images will be severely punished.
However I was wrong. He does create portraits of people. If you look at
- his Saatchi website site, you would see much more extreme examples of how he distorts shapes of women. As in wildly out of proportion and adopting some very odd postures.
- his Instagram account, you will see even more odd portraits of women. As in VERY odd.
Curiously they rarely have a head or a face (unless obvious copies of old photos associated with colonialism) - and I'm straight back to my first question again.
There again he's about challenging identities so maybe that's the answer - but I'm still back to my first question!
I just don't get it....
I'm left wondering whether any of the Judges were even aware that there are culturally significant issues about portraiture which they need to be aware of when progressing people through this competition. Maybe they never look at their artwork outside the competition?
Emma Alexandra
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| Self portrait and heat portrait of Beth Rigby by Emma Alexandra |
I have to confess my mouth dropped. However this was the artist that Beth Rigby chose. It's very flattering. She looks very young.
I'm not a huge fan of the Jonathan Yeo school of painting - which does head and maybe hands and missed out most of what's inbetween or does not execute it very well. I'm afraid this is who she reminded me of. Like I said - not a fan.
PAOTY 2025: Episode 6 Winner
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| The announcement that Ufrun Wahad has won this heat (left) Thalia Elliott and (right) Emma Alexandra |
I sincerely hope he is not the overall winner.
I really do NOT think Hannah Fry would appreciate a portrait which looks like the way he paints women.
Simple as.
(PS When I saw this pic, I appreciated for the first time how tall Ufrun is. What is it with small men and very large women?)
Who should have won!
90% of the people who have commented publicly - and me - all thought the same thing. The artist who
- very definitely should have been shortlisted and
- definitely should have won was Laura Cronin.
Here she is with her excellent self portrait.
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| Laura Cronin with her self portrait - outside Battersea Arts Centre |
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| Shane Lynch talking to Laura Cronin - before choosing her portrait as the one to take home |
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| Shane Lynch by Laura Bronin The winning portrait in the eyes of virtually the public. |
“the painting of Shane Lynch by the blonde lady should have won, we can’t all be wrong (comment on my Facebook page)
I think it's a huge shame that she didn't even get shortlisted. They need to invite her back.
Next Episode
The sitters for Episode 6 are
- Jacob Collier - an English Grammy winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and educator.
- Fatiha El-Ghouri - a British comedian and writer from Hackney
- Jack Dee -an English stand-up comedian, actor, presenter, and writer known for his sarcasm, irony, and deadpan humour from South London
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