Portrait artist of the year..

Not just you. DH and I thought the winning portrait was like something in The Beano. It didn’t capture his essence at all. I think Joan Bakewell wasn’t keen, either. And there were some really good attempts this week. Perhaps I don’t appreciate the “mark making”.

I’ve just listened to the latest The Rest is Politics in which Rory Stewart describes the overall winning portrait as a ‘grotesque caricature’. I think it was quite an insulting portrait of someone. Can’t believe it won.

I thought it was a bit like a modigliani.. it was definitely very graphic.. It would not have been my choice as a winner.. A friend of mine is on this series and in reality the experience of actually painting the sitter is nothing like it appears to the viewer..

Missed this, was the portrait of Joan Bakewell?

Clawdy

Missed this, was the portrait of Joan Bakewell?

Rory Stewart?
Though I'm not sure it was appropriate for him to be offensive?

Often in PAOTY I can see Why a picture has won, even if I don't like it personally but this season I don't think I've liked any of the winners so far, and can't see what it is the judges saw.

Chardy

Clawdy

Missed this, was the portrait of Joan Bakewell?

Rory Stewart?
Though I'm not sure it was appropriate for him to be offensive?

Well, it was only on TRIP’s when he was chatting about it with Alastair and he only said exactly what I thought about it. He obviously didn’t say it on the programme itself.

Well ... not really the one I would have chosen and clearly RS did not like it, which I can understand. I think it is unfortunate that he made his comment on the podcast.

It's not really good for the show if the sitters are publicly rude about the artists. In this day and age, it will get back to them, and of course this artist will be seen again in a later programme.

Well, imo it needed to be said. Especially as one of the judges said how it ‘wasn’t a caricature’; if that wasn’t a caricature I don’t know what is. He certainly wasn’t impolite to the artist in the programme but I think, when asked on the podcast about what it was like being on the programme wasn’t going to lie about how he felt about being confronted with such an unflattering portrait.

Just had a look at the portrait in question. I think the face is rather good in the sense that I do think it captures the 'mobility' of RS's face. I find him quite difficult to watch talking because I find what I call his face mobility quite weird.

That's probably just me (and possibly the judges who chose it) so shouldn't be taken as insulting to RS.

Some of the other portraits were good too though I didn't actually like many of them.

The face, in itself, would have been acceptable albeit very unflattering. But adding it onto a body that looked as if a five year old had drawn it looked very weird.

pascal30

I thought it was a bit like a modigliani.. it was definitely very graphic.. It would not have been my choice as a winner.. A friend of mine is on this series and in reality the experience of actually painting the sitter is nothing like it appears to the viewer..

Definitely

From en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani

It was awful. But don't you think that the best portrait is never picked.
DH likes to watch, I look over my glasses occasionally- do you think the judges talk for the sake of it, why use 5 words when you can waffle 29+ most of which make no sense.

I think that the judges are always looking for something different .
I certainly didn't like the winning portrait .

I do get very tired of all the portraits that are done from photos. What's the point of having someone sitting there for 4 hours if you're going to spend the whole time staring at your Ipad? When I was at art school we were always told that photographs are a poor substitute for life as the lens tends to distort the form of your subject. I thought that the portraits of Sue Barker, which had all been done from life, had far more about them than the others.

Interesting .... I thought the Sue Barker portraits were really wooden. In fact, to be honest, I was not wild about any of the pics this week!

I didn't think the standard overall this week was as good as in previous weeks.

Luckygirl3

Interesting .... I thought the Sue Barker portraits were really wooden. In fact, to be honest, I was not wild about any of the pics this week!

Me too. Which saddened me given that she said she’d never had her portrait painted before. I don’t think any of them showed what I can only describe as her niceness.

Poor Sue Barker -what an awful choice of unflattering portraits .
I thought that the overall standard was low .

Thank goodness. I thought they were going to choose the caricaturist again!

I think the winner should produce a very good portrait of Jane Goodall.

Did you see the portrait? I actually felt my eyes well up when I saw it. I don’t think Jane Goodall was an easy person to paint, being a force of nature packaged in the body of a slight tiny woman. I was rather envious of the artist’s garden