Painting Will Young

One of my favourite TV programmes – Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year – has also been adapting to lockdown. In order to unite the art community and provide a fun, interactive way to challenge artists they have been running weekly ‘live’ celebrity portrait sittings via Facebook Live, named Portrait Artist of the Week!

Unfortunately I have been too busy recently with NHS work and my painting commissions to participate fully but I didn’t want to think I had missed out entirely! So, I tuned in on May 24^th to see my favourite artist – and past winner of Sky Portrait Artist of the Year – Cristian Hook, paint singer (and original Pop Idol!) Will Young.

I was only able to watch the first couple of hours and really enjoyed the conversation between Will and Cristian, so much so that I didn’t do any ‘live’ painting. Instead I took a series of screenshots on my iPad to work on through the week.

I chose to work in acrylic on aluminium panel. Acrylic paints dry much quicker than oils – which has advantages and disadvantages! The aluminium panel provides a smooth surface and I enjoy the end result with aluminium.

To enter the competition, the images are shared on Instagram with the hashtag #myPAOTW . There were thousands of paintings and drawings submitted from all over the world – absolutely incredible! The judges must have had a very difficult task in singling out the top three, but the three they chose were indeed superb paintings.

Overall, a really enjoyable experience and I’m a little bit sad not to have been able to participate every week.

And, although the judges didn’t pick out my work, I am delighted to say that Will Young contacted me later and chose to buy the portrait from me!