2.2.2020
Sky Arts Portrait Challenge 2020 – Episode 1
Review of some of the artwork completed
I like to watch this programme as I am really interested in portraiture, and love to see the myriad of different ways the professional and amateur artists work, and the range of materials they use and why they chose them.
This lady began with a freely drawn outline of the sitter that bore an incredible likeness from the very beginning. She began to use a second neutral colour to build up definition, putting in lines and faint washes to create form. She was a very relaxed painter, standing with her left hand in her pocket.
The final likeness is an accurate facsimile of the sitter. She had a challenging full frontal image to capture and her painterly skills are really highlighted in this. However, the painting does lack some ‘life’ and animation in it and the sitter stares emotionless out at the viewer. It doesn’t capture any notion of the man as the jovial, spirited character her clearly was.
Another lady working on the same character chose to paint in oils on an aluminium panel.
She acknowledged that the painting is hard in the initial stages because it slides over the surface. It took a while for her to capture a likeness, but the final result was fairly accurate. The portrait was muted and gentle and the tones made both the picture and the sitter exude the warmth he clearly had.
This painter did a monochromatic under-painting and then with loose, Lucien Freud style marks built up a good likeness of the young lad without overworking the image. The muted tones and hints of warm pinks and the graphic background resulted in an interesting composition and painting.
This artist spent the first few hours of the 4 hour time limit completing sketches to get to know his sitter. Then he completed this picture in the remaining hour. It is a really good likeness of the sitter. Again it is not overworked and it has a really graphic quality which works well with his young model. Not sure this style would have worked equally well with all the sitters on this programme.
This portrait went on to win this episode.
I liked these two submissions of self-portraits. The first, a rondo, has a very Japanese influence and the juxta positioning of colours worked really well.
The second portrait is a beautifully sensitive one completed with coloured pencils on black paper by a 16 year old girl.
Episode 2
This was a striking submission which says so much about the artist as a painter and musician and someone with a sense of humour. The composition is really interesting strong and arresting too.
This second self-portrait by an artist who paints in acrylic and credits Lucien Freud as his inspiration and said that he: ‘Starts [painting] with the strongest darks and the strongest lights…starts with blocks and doesn’t worry about where lines go….’ He likes how Freud applies thick paint with broad brushstrokes .
He made a very impressive and confident start with broad brush strokes and within a few strokes it was clear he had captured the essence of his sitter. It was amazing to watch as his picture took on more and more life.
Another artist painted this same sitter and yet their portrait, by comparison lacks the same suggestion of character this first artist has achieved.
Similarly this artist achieved an incredible likeness of his sitter within the first half hour of his painting. He captured the character and resolve of his sitter and focussed on his face and his purposeful hands whilst the rest of the painting, by intention recedes into the background. Choosing not to paint the toned background emphasized the hands and face even more.
All of these artists just ‘drew’ their subjects directly with the paint brush. It amazes me that they managed to capture such strong likenesses in relatively few brush strokes. That was really inspiring.
Episode 3
This was a lovely, striking sensitive initial submission. It comprised a fairly muted palette with subtle skin tones and an unusual pink and plum palette. The artist said his aim was to achieve a ‘scruffy but vulnerable’ looking image.
When he began his portrait of his sitter he began with a grey monochrome painting which instantly captured a good likeness. From the start, it had a very ‘Victorian’, classical feel about the painting. I was fascinated to watch his progress and wonder what he was going to do next. He spent a long time tweaking the underpainting.
Ironically the sitter was wearing clothes that were a similar set of pink and purple hues that the artist had used in his own submission. When he came to add colour, he began by dropping colour into her top and neck scarf. Then, I was amazed to see him applying a uniform block of skin colour over much of his initial under-painting. It began to look like a Warhol screen print. I was keen to see him work tones into the face to animate it and make it look less like a hand coloured photographic image. Unfortunately he was never able to elevate the finished portrait and it looked flat and primitive with a distinct lack of tones. It was really disappointing to watch after such a positive start. It was like he became ‘stuck’.
Another artist that fascinated me had completed a really interesting submission in charcoal with just a hint of chalk pastel colouring. It was a self-portrait of him in a dress. The tones were amazingly subtle and the image very provocative. It certainly was effective in attracting the judges attention.
When he began drawing he chose to use chalk pastel on a toned background. He worked quickly and within an hour it was hard to understand what he might spend the next 3 hours of the challenge working on. What really surprised, amazed and encouraged me was that he did not blend his pastels at all. He just kept working over his drawing adding more layers and allowing the marks to blend visually. It was really effective and I will be exploring this technique myself the next time I use chalk pastels. I have never been sure whether you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ blend, but in seeing this I have been inspired to explore ‘not blending’.
Another very young amateur artist had submitted this self portrait. She had used copic markers for the base colours and tones, and then added more detail using prismacolour pencils. Her proficiency with these modern materials was very good. She did almost exclusively look at, and work from the photo she had taken of the model and rarely look at the model at all.
As her work progressed it looked really good. It was hard to appreciate what it looked like as a whole as she was working on a flat surface. It did look amazing as we saw peeks of it. However, when it was held up for display it was evident that she had not really captured the essence of the sitter.
I do wonder if she had worked on an angled board, and paid a little more attention to the presence of the sitter if things might have worked better for her. Personally I am becoming increasingly aware that there is often distortion in my work if I work on it on a flat surface, and I am trying, wherever possible to work on an angled one.
Cathy's OCA Drawing 1 Blog 