take 2 : sky arts : portrait artist of the week
I don’t think anyone knew, least of all Sky Arts and the #PAOTW team, that this concept would be such a runaway success. Four hours every Sunday, watching someone famous for being on Portrait Artist of the Year paint someone more conventionally famous, whilst chatting about paint and life and art. Four hours. Nine Sundays on the trot. I for one (of thousands, apparently) am hooked. It’s been my isolation therapy. My time out. My time in. It’s pushed me to try other online activities, I’ve joined up to a Royal Drawing School summer school class. I’ve linked in with several online life drawing classes, @drawinglifeglasgow, @reconfigure_lifedrawing and @thedrawingsesh. And I now I spend every other Thursday ‘painting each other’ with @moustache_portraits. All of which has inspired me to progress my whole painting life, I’ve never been so productive!
This online art thing is definitely for me, I can potter out to my studio-shed and log on. I can be quiet in a big group of people. I can contribute or not. I love it. Properly love it. So, whilst we all want this corona virus thing over and done with, I, for one, want some semblance of the day to day life we have found ourselves in whilst in lock down to remain. I want time and quiet and the possibility of achieving that oh-so-ellusive work-life balance.
WEEK 9 : Mary Beard (little added update 22.6.20)
Might be my smoothest and most straightforward portrait process so far…does that mean I am getting better? Watch this space, I’ll be back to square one next time probably. But one step forward two steps back, at least progress is progress. I’'ll take that!
WEEK 8 : Professor Green/Stephen Manderson
Progress from right to left. The first image was very early doors. The white paint paddy was about 3 hours in. Then another hour to get through to the final image on the left.
WEEK 7 : Clare Balding
A wonderfully engaging, convivial sitter. I’ve made her look very unhappy. She wasn’t. But I am not quite there with knowing how to remedy that!
WEEK 6 : Noel Fielding.
So bad that he ended up as a landscape. After another white paint paddy.
WEEK 3 (I think?) : Rankin
(Don’t ask about the intervening weeks, much as I love them both, Will Young’s and Judge Rob Rinder’s portraits did not quite pass muster). Note the first white paint paddy. Now my trademark.
Head over to Instagram and #myPAOTW for all the submissions to the whole eight week shebang….
So thank you, Sky Arts and Joan Bakewell, and thank you to the ‘judgementals’, Kathleen Soriano, Kate Bryan and Tai Shan Schierenberg.
What will I do without you, I’ll have to start cooking the Sunday lunch again after next week.