Portrait Artist Of The Year

We watch too much TV, most of it selected by me, on subscription services my parents would not understand: HULU, Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock. Even those with names they’d recognize would be unrecognizable to them: HBO Max, Disney. We watch on a TV screen so big my dad would definitely be worried about how much money we spent on it. Last fall, when we were in search of some semblance of peace and possible distraction, Lee took a turn at the remote and pulled up a little something called Portrait Artist of the Year, which airs on Sky Arts in the United Kingdom. We watched on Prime Video. Much like another favorite of mine, The Great British Bake-off, it’s a competition show with a gentle vibe, patient judges, and an overall easy demeanor. Artists from across the UK are selected to paint a famous person in a round of “heats”. The ultimate prize is a £10,000 commission to paint a portrait of a famous personality to be hung in a national gallery.  Artists enter with a self-portrait and are then selected by the judges to compete. Which is a long way to say that it’s time to DISCOVER YOUR INNER PICASSO.

I’m no artist, as I think you’ll see, but I needed to choose one of these:

They all come with their own difficulty but inspired by months of watching Portrait Artist of the Year, and naively undeterred, I chose a self-portrait. I live with an artist and also count buying art/craft supplies as one of my own hobbies so paint, paper, and brushes were not an issue. My artist does not do portraits, although he did do a very nice painting of his parents from a photo for their birthdays a couple of years ago. Andrew’s best friend, Nathan, is an artist who does a lot of self-portraits, so I texted him for advice. He suggested starting with an outline of my face and features using a pencil or charcoal and then filling it in with color after. Sounds easy, right? I asked him if he works from a mirror or a photo and he said always from a mirror because it gives a greater sense of dimension. His last piece of advice, just be patient.

I drug an old tabletop easel of Lee’s from the garage, my makeup mirror from my bathroom, and set up shop on the kitchen island. Almost as soon as I began I wanted to be finished. Trying to create a self-portrait was incredibly humbling. I started with the pencil drawing. It didn’t really look like me, but I wasn’t discouraged. That wasn’t the hard part. Applying the paint was the hard part. Seems like the fun part. No. Each time I ended up just looking like one big blob of paint. When Lee came home, three attempts already crumpled in the trash, I told him I couldn’t do it. No skills, no ability. I may have used a few choice words; I’ll keep it clean here. It was all pressure, no fun. Self-inflicted pressure, the best kind.If you’ve read my posts before you know I am willing to be vulnerable. It’s not a feeling I love, and often have a vulnerability hangover as soon as I post, but I am willing to go there. This kind of vulnerability, showing just how bad you are at something, and including multiple images of yourself in the process. That’s next level.

Lee wanted to help by printing a sort of guide using a picture of me. I resisted and then just gave in. He kept saying, if you can get a likeness everything else will fall into place. Thinking I would be able to get a likeness was so ambitious as to be laughable, but I knew the real problem was the painting part. He disappeared upstairs only to return with several pages printed with my face. While appreciative, what I really wanted was for him to show me how he’d paint the page. I had no idea how to start, even with a map to follow.

He pulled up the photo on the phone and told me you have to look at the light and dark areas. It took me a minute, but I did see what he meant. Shadows along the jawline, eyes; lighter areas across the upper part of my face and the bridge of my nose. He did offer praise for my paint colors, which I knew could never be recreated. I watched amazed as he gave me a 10-minute class. I knew I could not do what he had just done. No way. It was far from perfect but in 10 minutes, not bad.

I left the painting taped to the easel the next day, unsure if I would even try it myself. Lee had gone to so much trouble to help, not trying just felt wrong. So the following afternoon I switched out the pre-printed paper and gave it a go. Just like I assumed, I could not recreate the paint colors, and so the effort was less than successful. Actually, as you can see, it’s more than the paint colors, it just sucks. It’s okay, you can laugh. It is funny. I tried to use his painting as a guide, realizing about halfway through that I was supposed to be looking at the photo for color guidance not the painting. Then I gave up. I think we can agree I look better without a beard.

I had another plan.I have many kid’s art books that that I haven’t used in a very long time and this exact scenario is why people like me hold onto things forever. With a page on self-portraits, this book has been waiting for years for this very day. Justification!

I taped up a new paper, switched from the acrylic paint we’d been using to the watercolors suggested in the book, and tried again. I didn’t worry about colors or likeness; I just had fun. The thing that had felt wrong to me about the printed photos was the earnestness of it all. I was taking myself so seriously and it was obvious to me, and ultimately to Lee, that I wasn’t good at this, and that’s okay. Really, was there some expectation I would be? When I taught preschool, and then later as a Youth Services librarian, I embraced the idea of process art over product art, where the goal is not to recreate something from an example but to explore and have fun. We did our share of product art in the library, to be sure. Here’s a pig puppet, and all the pieces to make him. Often it’s just easier that way, but kids seem to have the most fun when you can just let them create freely. I guess that’s true for me, too.

It’s your turn. Go ahead, try it. Along with your snow snacks, and flashlight batteries, buy some art supplies and make a self-portrait. If the weather folks are right, you are going to have some time on your hands. Bad weather or not, turn off your big screen, put down your small one, don’t take yourself too seriously, and have some fun.

I’d love to hear if you tackle this or any of the other possible masterpieces suggested above. I may try those myself in the future. My ego may need a bit of time to recover. Thank you for reading, and stay warm out there.

Before you go…last January I decided I wanted to send a postcard to each family member for their birthday. I selected a couple of different postcard designs, ordered fun stamps (I love stamps!), and started mailing. I’m not going to lie, I don’t think they all arrived, some disappeared into a postal void, others probably waited a very long time in the unopened mailboxes of the young adults who don’t check the mail like I do. I hope they are received with the love I send them with, but ultimately I can’t control that. I like the the act of sending them. In late December, I started shopping around for postcards for the new year. I found some you design yourself, which seemed fun at the time, but now, seems like a really bad idea!

If you’d like to get a birthday postcard from me, leave me a comment, or a message, and I’ll add you to my list. You can decide if you want to risk requesting one I design myself.