I look forward to the Preston Portrait Challenge every year! Below is a blog post about my experience at this year's event.
The Preston Portrait Challenge is held once a year and is limited to around 20 participants. It is usually held on the top floor in The Guild Hall, which is a really nice space with lots of natural light. It's also open to the public, so you can watch the artists at work. There are two sitters on separate sides of The Guild Hall and you don't know which one you will be painting until you have finished setting up. You have around 4 hours (with a few breaks in between) to paint a portrait of one of the sitters.
This year's sitters were designer Ben Casey and founder of the Windrush Initiatives Adrian Murrell.
Ben Casey was the sitter on my side of The Guild Hall. Above is a photo I took about 1 hour into the challenge. I paint sight size (which means I paint the portrait at the exact same size as I see it from my view point) and as I couldn't get much closer without blocking the view of the other painters, I decided to go for a (almost!) full figure. I liked the colour of Ben's jacket with the orange pen in his top pocket contrasting against the blue. Annoyingly I hadn't brought much cobalt blue with me, as I usually don't use much in my portraits, so I wasn't very happy with my painting of the jacket.
Overall though I was pleased with the outcome. I thought I found a decent likeness early on and could then spend the rest of the time tweaking bits, but like always, I ended up fiddling with unnecessary details and then had very little time towards the end. Ben Casey was a great sitter and was very still throughout. However, he did get up and walk off before the time was up while I was still painting his hands!
We always frame the paintings there and then at the end, so it's important to bring along everything you need to do that on the day. The paintings then get judged and taken to a venue to be exhibited for a week or so. This year the paintings are being shown at The Artistry House in Winckley Square, which is a lovely venue and really feels like you're in someone's house, looking at all their artwork on the walls.
I am very pleased to say that my painting won 1st prize at the opening last night. I love taking part in the event and I would do it even without the chance of winning anything just because I enjoy painting people from life, but to be awarded 1st prize makes it even more special.
It was nice to have a chance to speak to Ben Casey last night after the awards. I have read a bit about him since painting his portrait and knew he has been involved in lots of things to do with Preston. It was interesting to find out that he designed all the seating inside Deepdale Stadium with the faces of the former players, like Sir Tom Finney shown below. I saw these designs every other weekend as a kid going on North End but never really thought about them too much. Only after chatting with Ben did I think about someone being tasked with turning a photo of the player's face into a pixelated design that could be applied to seating in just a few simple colours while still retaining a likeness of the player on a huge scale and from a distance. It's a completely different type of portrait but still a portrait nevertheless.
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