Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Kayoon Anderson painted journalist Clive Myrie on today’s live session of Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Week.
Kayoon reused a canvas, the first portrait that she’d ever painted from life.
The presenting team included Kate Bryan and Tai-Shan Schierenberg.
Nicola Coughlan, who describes herself as a ‘Small Irish Acting Person’, was today’s subject on the Portrait Artist of the Year live session on Sky Arts. There’s an option of using a still as reference or of joining in the full four-hour session, but I went just for the final hour and drew her as I might draw someone at a party, in a cafe or in the pub. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can sit in a cafe again and sketch the world going by.
Today’s artist was Alastair Faulkner, who, when he’s not painting, works as a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon. He pointed out there were similarities in the two strands of his career but he can never step away from an operation that’s presenting challenges as he can from a painting.
I took the opportunity to draw presenters Kathleen Soriano, Kate Bryan and Tai-Shan Schierenberg.
As always, struggled with Joan Bakewell (top left).
Dannii Minogue was our model for Sky Arts’ last one-hour live session of Portrait Artist of the Week. I wanted to go back to my regular sketchbook style, the quick sketches that I’d do if we were watching people go by from a cafe, rather than building up a single drawing, as I did in previous weeks.
I struggled with Dannii but presenter and portrait painter Tai-Shan Schierenberg worked better as a quick drawing. I’ll miss the weekly sessions but I feel that I’m getting geared up to travelling around with a sketchbook and hope that before too long in the new year we’ll have more freedom to travel.
This week’s sitter on Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Week was Lesley Garrett, painted by Tom Croft. I’ve painted this straight off in watercolour, with no initial drawing.
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.