This week’s final one-hour live portrait-drawing session on Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Week was Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow, painted in oils by Catherine MacDiarmid. As the camera kept cutting to her explaining the progress of the painting, she made it onto the top right hand corner of my page, above Portrait Artist presenter Joan Bakewell.
Jon explained the cunning plan behind his brightly-coloured tie: when he’s interviewing people they’re attracted to the tie, which distracts them from scrutinising his face too closely. It didn’t work on Catherine though, as she added a suggestion of the tie only towards the end of her 4-hour session with him. She explained that she invariably starts a portrait with the ‘golden triangle’ of eyebrows and nose. Once she’s established that she introduces the rest of the face but she’s content not to define the edges, she lets them move freely until she’s happy with them. The mouth, which she finds one of the most difficult features, is usually the last to go in.
Jon’s preference for colour was to extend to his shirt – he thought that he should wear blue – but Catherine requested white as she’s keen on reflected light, even adding a subtle dash of reflected colour of the tie below his chin.