Welcome inside my head, transcribed from the Semi-final of Portrait Artist Of The Year 2023!

For an objective view of the competition, follow the fantastic Making A Mark blog by Katherine Tyrell. Katherine is a veteran reporter of the show (amongst other great artworld content), and applies her artistic eye and statistical head to give very fair reflection and advice.

You may also like my blog about how I prepared for the show, my blog about the heat, and my process demo video .

Before we start, here are action shots of all the artists. Click on any image below for links to their website/social media. PLEASE check them out, we’re not defined by a 4 hour painting, you may be very surprised by what you find. Huge thanks to Stephanie Chappell  stephaniechappell.com & big-dog.tv for the photos.

Now, if you dare, take the red pill… and read on!

(6.45am on Semi Finals filming day. Wendy and Sara are in the hotel foyer. Spotting each others’ canvasses and kit, we guess we’re all contestants - a nice icebreaker. Walk to Battersea Arts Centre together, to meet the other artists and have some breakfast)

“they all seem very grown up and relaxed”

(Yvadne, all smiles, tells us she’s been brought back as the wildcard. Davide isn’t feeling very well and is talking about coffee).

“Right, I’ve done all I possibly can to make the best of this. Here we are, lining up in the corridor, we’ve all done it before so we know the drill”

(Walking in to the hall and seeing the set for the first time, on camera)

“OMFG. But the chair is fine, I can work with the chair”

(Walking in for the 2nd take)

“Thank goodness Anna is so nice and relaxed, because we’ve got to stand together and marvel at the set together, again, while looking entirely natural, spontaneous, and delighted”

(Emma Bunton is announced and walks in)

“Woweeeee! I actually know this person. OMG why oh why didn’t I wear my Buffaloes today? I practically live in them. How come she hasn’t aged AT ALL? That suit’s great, I can work with that, it’s like Debbie’s dress on my practice run. Shiny hair! Great jaw! Great shoes! Olympics opening ceremony! Must remember her surname and not call her Baby Spice” etc etc

(Starting off)

“OK this is great. I can eyeball the composition, and fit the lot in. I’m glad of the big canvas because I can do that and still have room for a decent face. Just like I practiced with Jon. She’s sitting pretty still, looks like she’s intending to keep that up so I’ll proceed working from life”

(After 40 minutes)

“Boom! Look at that nice bit of space just to the left of the plinth. That’s a win. All seems to fit. I’ve got this composition nailed. Just need to sort that head…”

(Camera crew, doing their duty, ask me to step away so they can get a progress shot. This takes a few minutes because they take a video. I return to continue working…)

“Oh shit, it’s dried, I should have used retarder medium in the acrylic underpainting! I can’t scrub the patently wrong head off. Shitshitshit! OK. Breathe. I’ll sort it out with the oils after the break”

(After the break, starting with the oil paints)

“Right. Breathe. Stick to the plan. Where’s my red paint? Gonna need a load of that. Looks bright yellow by the lights. The curtains are cool red (alizarin) and the carpet is warm (cadmium). What am I going to do with those boots? I know! They’re super-unsaturated, so I can make them pop by using the saturation contrast with the background. Like the opposite of what people like Sarah Manolescue do with sunsets. That’s a really clever idea. Bet nobody else has thought of that. Well done Gail. Go Gail!”

(Lots of camera crew and staff are between us and Emma. Someone interviews me and I think I’ve made a good meaty comment about wanting to show Emma as a mother and a businesswoman. But then I may have called her Emma Bunting. D’ohh).

“Just get the big shapes down. Block it in. You can do this. Just paint what you can see. Hang on a minute, I can’t see Emma! What’s Ed doing? Ed always paints from life. He’s right next to me looking cool calm and collected with his reasonable sized canvas… better take a photo to work from”.

(Tai interviews me. He feels like an old friend, and his confidence in my ability is calming)

(Lunch time. We’re herded off set, and in the corridor Emma comes and chats with us)

“OMG she’s so nice. Is she actually famous, or just a normal person? If we were at school together I’d want to be her friend. She hasn’t even rushed off, she’s properly chatting and is really REALLY nice. I must NOT make her look like a dragon”.

(All the artists seem lovely. Wendy is all smiles. I bolt my food and make my excuses, feeling rude, but I know it’s not going to plan. I will trust my stamina to work through any breaks where allowed)

“trust the process, turn the canvas, get the face shape basically right using the photo”.

(It’s quiet, most people are at lunch. I’m at the easel, and sense someone behind me. There like a vision of compassion is Morag and Genty, coming for a walk round while the audience is out of the room. We have a lovely chat. She offers solidarity. I get the chance I’ve always wanted to tell her how amazing her prizewinning portrait commission of Lenny Henry is)

“here come the audience, we’re back on show”

(The judges are doing their mid-way sum-up in front of the audience, so we’re asked to put our headphones on, presumably so we can’t hear them. I had taken the instructions to the letter, bringing headphones, but not actually connected to any music! So I put them on anyway, but am too busy with crisis intervention to listen to dialogue. Someone in the audience comes over and gently tells me the judges don’t like the background. Something about Emma being on fire!)

“Argh! Do I sort the face (which needs a lot of work), or the background (which I now know is a problem)? Can’t face the face. Can’t see Emma anyway. Need some purple to kill that yellow in the backgound round the shoes… but I don’t even own purple paint, and it’s going to have to be strong to knock back that hellfire. Definitely don’t want to mix purple, adding even more red to that canvas, I need actual purple pigment”

(Ed helps me out with a tube of purple. He still seems incredibly calm)

“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be calm like Ed? This is the first tube of purple I’ve ever used… why am I experimenting in the Semi Final?!”

(After this it’s all a bit of a blur. I’m covered in paint. There’s something up with my mic, the cameraman tries to help but it’s fallen down my cleavage and he is reluctant to go there. Kathleen, lovely Kathleen, steps forward and fishes it out with reassuring good humour)

“OK, damage limitation. Stay calm. Really really carefully pick out highlights on Emma’s face, to try and find the structure. Every mark is critical, no time for more mistakes. She’s dancing now, so it’s totally fine to use a photo”

(Kathleen walks past with a crew member, she’s looking to interview someone who’s not painting from a photo, asking “is ANYONE painting from life?”. I pipe up that I would normally, but have just had to resort to photo because of the poor view. It sounds like a pathetic excuse! Only Ed is sticks to his guns throughout).

“Right, I’m going to have one more go at painting from life. Stephen’s talking to Emma, but I don’t think it’s being filmed. I’m going up there to ask if she could resume her pose. It feels very awkward, but I need this!”

(I look into the audience for a friendly face. Debbie doesn’t see me in time to compose herself… )

“Debs looks very worried. I don’t blame her, this is NOT where I expected to be at this stage. It’s the worst portrait I’ve done in a very long time”

Stephen: “Artists… Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much!”

(Right. Game over. Photos with Emma. Finally get to meet the other artists properly. They are all lovely. Their portraits are all amazing. We are all exhausted. But it’s not over yet. Wendy is like a swan, turns out she’s been chatting to my son Tom.)

Stephen: “Artists, please turn your canvasses round”.

“Oh no. There’s no escape. How on earth is Emma going to find something nice to say about mine? This is going to be a serious test of her performing ability! Did I imagine a flicker of horror?”

(Emma is gracious and lovely about every single one. I don’t think I’m the only one who did a load of practice for this day!)

“Keep smiling even though you want to run away. It’s just a show. You’ll live it down in a few years”

(We line up for the judgement. We know the process. I look over to Debbie, who gives me a 50:50 sign that there’s actually a chance, based on the judges’ summary, that I might make it through. The winners are announced. Wendy, Davide, and Lorena. Great choices. Absolutely fair. When we are hugging our goodbyes to the judges, Kathleen tells me it was very close. That helps.

Then it’s all over. We have to walk out to go to the corridor and clean our brushes. On the way, two audience members and a 2 crew members make a point of very kindly telling me they love what I’d done, and that I was not to regret going large. I don’t believe them.

My workstation and brushes are chaos, because towards the end, desperate to use every second, I stopped putting the lids back on paint the tubes. I hate cleaning brushes anyway, but this is tough. Packing up feeling quite low about my painting. Thinking about the artists in my heat, wondering if one of them would have made more of the opportunity. And wondering if they felt like this, as they packed up. Then I head up to the café to wait for the wet canvas to be wrapped so I can take it away. There are my boys. And Yvadne. And others… smiling… chatting… I start to feel a bit better. By the time the canvas arrives I’m just relieved to be setting off back to Bristol)

Lessons learned

I had a brilliant but exhausting day. I am beyond grateful, but before waxing lyrical about the benefits, here are three key lessons learned:

• I should have paid more attention to Katherine Tyrells excellent advice in her blog, that for the Semi-Final, working from life is almost impossible. Emma Bunton is a MASSIVE star, and a truly lovely human, who had clearly put a lot of consideration into how she would be portrayed. She was being interviewed/filmed/chatted to a lot, and being a fabulous energetic engaged person, needed to get up and move around. With the increased distance between the artists and sitter, there was even more traffic between us and her, which meant that a clear view of Emma, in pose, was a rare treat after the first few minutes.

The truth is, after doing this four hour practice from life of a friend, on the same size canvas I used for the show (30x40”) I got ahead of myself and thought it would be OK!

• I should have asked the Storyvault team to wait a few minutes, when they asked me to step away from my canvas so they could take footage during the underpainting process. This is a really critical point, I was trying to get Emma’s head right, and in proportion, but by the time they’d finished videoing my canvas, the patently wrong acrylic underpainting was dry and couldn’t be adjusted. I could have used extender medium to keep it open longer, but I had rejected that because of needing it to dry over the first break.

• I so nearly wore my Buffaloes! I often do, and that would have been a great opportunity to make a connection with Emma. As Emma commented at the end, she felt a real connection and good energy with Wendy (everyone does, she’s lovely!). Connecting with your sitter is a basic portraiture skill that I should have remembered to consider.

Benefits of the show

• The biggest benefit, by far, is the practice beforehand. If you’re wondering whether to apply, DO IT! My portraiture has come on in leaps and bounds, and I’ve spent many happy hours practicing with new and old friends.

• Exposure. In the contemporary art world, we have to do our own marketing. PAOTY is an absolute gift. It doesn’t matter how you do, people will look at your website, your submission portrait, and your other work. Savvy contestants, regardless of how they get on, line up press releases etc to make the best of it.

• The wonderful people I met, some of whom will be lifelong friends and inspiration. The judges and presenters who we all know and love. The heat and Semi Final artists. Jay Rayner. Crew and audience. Also a sense of excitement, based on the demographic of Storyvault Films staff, that the future is in the hands of bright, diverse, positive, intelligent, generous youth who REALLY have their heads screwed on.

• Knowing myself as an artist - my strengths and weaknesses, so I could decide what to embrace or work on. I’m not all about portraits, but there is something particularly challenging about them, which truly stretches the ability.

• Getting used to being on camera - this was really useful for my TEDx talk (which will be released early next year - watch this space), and for livestreams.

• Being able to show my kids the amount of work that goes into a 1 hour show, both for the performers (that’s what we all were, really), and the crew.

What did you make of it all then? Please let me know in the comments, and enjoy the rest of Series 10!

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