This week’s sitter was Clive Myrie, journalist, presenter and BBC newsreader. Clive has been on our tv screens for years and has reported from over 80 countries. He sat quite still in his study and we learnt about his extensive career but he did flap his hands around quite a lot which made them hard to draw. Some members rose to the challenge and included his hands.

Clive loves abstract expressionism and his favourite artists are Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko (a god amongst artists, said Clive), Jackson Pollock and Aubrey Williams. He and his wife have had their portraits painted once, by the artist Ryan Gander . Here is the painting, so make your own minds up if it’s a good representation…

The artist was Kayoon Anderson, a semi finalist on PAOTY 2020. She studied architecture for 3 years but left the course when she decided to make portrait painting her career. Kayoon drew for about 20 minutes to get Clive’s features in the correct place, then started painting on a canvas prepared with a Raw Umber wash. She used Titanium White, Lemon Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. Unusually Kayoon painted the background first, saying she prefers to paint this way as then she can judge the face colours better. It was another very entertaining session with two people of different ages, sexes, backgrounds and careers getting to know each other better.

Here’s Kayoon showing Clive how many colours she saw in his skin.

Cynthia painted in acrylics on an 8” x 10” canvas. She also saw many colours in Clive’s skin, all of which are complemented by the rich purple colour that Cynthia has added as a background.

Steve created two portraits of Clive, the first in coloured pencils on cartridge paper, with Clive’s face looking 3D with the careful shading around his cheeks and chin.

The second portrait is oil pastels on Canson Mi-Teintes paper with Clive looking very serious, but his skin colour rich and looking real.

Juliet used pencils for her sketch, using darker tones around Clive’s eyes, making them look like they are looking intently at whoever he is about to interview.

Dot used watercolours on A4 paper to paint Clive’s face during the session then used watercolour pencils to paint his hands afterwards. She enjoyed the conversation between artist and sitter and like other members commented that although he looks serious reading the news he was a lovely man and the whole conversation very interesting.

For Tracy it was all about Clive’s eyes. While he was being posed at the beginning of the session he looked straight into his computer’s camera and that was the pose Tracy painted. In watercolours on A4 300gsm watercolour paper from Hobbycraft, taking about 30 minutes to draw then 90 minutes to paint.

Here is Kayoon’s finished portrait of Clive, then the picture that he himself chose as his favourite from nearly 2000 entries from the public. After those two are the top three choices by the judges, portraits by the youngsters and images from the wall.