We're back this autumn with a double dose of portrait magic! While Stephen Mangan hosts a brand new series of Portrait Artist of the Year on Wednesdays from 14th October, co-presenter Joan Bakewell is live each following Sunday from 18th October with a sister series of Portrait Artist of the Week. Stephen and Joan will then be reunited in person to host a new series of Landscape Artist of the Year in early 2021.
For the seventh series of PAOTY a new batch of amateur and professional artists chosen from thousands of entrants, compete to see who has what it takes to impress our distinguished judges - Tai Shan Schierenberg, Kathleen Soriano and Kate Bryan. We welcome another 24 distinguished writers, actors, musicians and TV personalities to sit for the portraits. The series was recorded within strict safety protocols at Battersea Arts Centre.
Sitting this year are: Pam Hogg (Fashion Designer), Ray BLK (Musician), James Nesbitt (Actor), Katie Piper (Model/TV Presenter), Robert Rinder (TV Personality), Don Letts (Film Director/Musician), Fay Ripley (Actor), Ncuti Gatwa (Actor), Lady Glenconner (author); Mirren Mack (Actor), Sir Trevor McDonald, The Vivienne (TV Personality), Paul Mescal (Actor), Sian Clifford (Actor), Eddie Marsan (Actor), Deborah James (Author, Broadcaster), Eamonn Walker (Actor), Melanie Sykes (TV Presenter), David Haig (Actor), Jane Horrocks (Actor), Kwame Kwei Armah (Actor), Dame Katherine Grainger DBE(Five times Olympian Rower, Chair of UK Sport, Broadcaster), Fred Sirieix (Restaurateur and TV Presenter).
Nine artists compete in each heat, and heat winners go on to paint Booker-prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo in the semi-final. The three finalists have a few days to paint a commission, and then compete to portray the brilliant comedian and raconteur Eddie Izzard. This season's Portrait Artist of the Year winner will receive a £10,000 commission to paint world-famous ballet dancer and Director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet Carlos Acosta, which will be exhibited at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.
Following its huge success during lockdown, Portrait Artist of the Week (PAOTW), has been confirmed to return to @SkyTV Facebook, as well as airing on Sky Arts in the same weeks as the flagship series.
PAOTW is a unique live-streamed paint-along version of the main series, and the first event during lockdown received over 20,000 entries from all parts of the world including Pakistan to Ecuador to the UK. PAOTW features celebrity sitters in their own homes, with one of the finalists from the main series painting live via Facebook. Artists at home are invited to submit their final portrait to the judges through social media using the hashtag #MYPAOTW.
At the end of each week judges choose three of their favourite portraits to feature on the following live programme, and the judges also pick out their favourite 3 portraits painted by children. The pilot series reached more than 4.6 million people, with sitters including Noel Fielding, Will Young, Bernardine Evaristo, acclaimed dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and broadcaster and journalist Clare Balding.
The welcome return of the show comes as part of Sky Arts mission to increase access to, and drive participation in the arts in all its forms. Sky Arts is the UK's only channel dedicated to arts and culture, and is to be made free for everyone this September, at a vital time for the cultural sector. Sky Arts will embark on an ambitious programme of activity to support and champion the arts - putting artists, creatives, and public participation centre stage on a channel that everyone across the UK can watch on Freeview.
Landscape Artist of the Year is due to return in early 2021 and production is already underway. Portrait Artist of the Year, Landscape Artist of the Year and Portrait Artist of the Week are produced by Storyvault; Executive producers are Danielle Graham, Samantha Richards and Stuart Prebble. Benedetta Pinelli is commissioning editor for Sky.
For more information please contact:
calum.mcgarry@premiercomms.com / jenny.carroll@premiercomms.com
About Sky Arts
As the UK's only dedicated arts channel, Sky Arts exists to bring more art to more people across the UK. By throwing open the doors to make the channel free to air, we want to increase access to and participation in the arts. Offering something for everyone, whatever their passion, Sky Arts showcases the best of classical and popular music, theatre, opera, dance and the visual arts, as well as original drama and comedy.
About Sky
With 24 million customers across six countries, Sky is Europe's leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Our 32,000 employees help connect our customers to the very best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own local, original content.
Following the success of Sky originals like Chernobyl, we plan to double our investment in original content by 2024. We're also developing a new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, which is expected to lead to the creation of over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in UK creative sector in the first five years alone.
Our technology allows Sky customers to watch what they want, when they want, how they want and connects millions of people to content they love. And our online streaming service, NOW TV, brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service.
We also believe that a company of our scale has a responsibility that goes beyond our business, and into the community. We recently announced a series of commitments to help tackle racial injustice and improve diversity and inclusion. To ensure the commitments are delivered, Sky will invest £10million per year across its markets for each of the next three years.
Europe Stories
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/07/2026
New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more
Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...
01/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
01/07/2026
Exclusive run of limited-edition modelling pedals
Sweetwater and Andertons M...
01/07/2026
UKTV has today announced the appointment of Matt Berry to the newly created role of General Manager - Marketing, effective 1 July.
Matt will take on this senio...
01/07/2026
Sky Zero Footprint Fund-backed TV campaign featuring Deborah Meaden challenges consumers to rethink everyday bathroom wasteWednesday 1 July 2026
Fussy asks Bri...
01/07/2026
Constituency-level analysis reveals where girls miss out most on sport - and where targeted action could unlock more than £640 million in economic and health be...
01/07/2026
Wuppertal July 1, 2026
Riedel and SKAARHOJ Expand Collaboration With SimplyLive IntegrationRiedel Communications today announced an expanded collaboration wit...
01/07/2026
Apple today introduced power-packed updates to Apple Creator Studio, a groundbre...
01/07/2026
Nectar360, the Retail Media, Loyalty and Insights business of the Sainsburys Gro...
01/07/2026
9.2 million streams on RT Player between 11 and 28 June
Reach of 2.9 million viewers during Group stages of FIFA World Cup on RT 2
23 million video views acr...
30/06/2026
Could your journalism reach an international stage?
Entries are now open for the Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 2026, one of the most prestigi...
30/06/2026
Brings together saturation & lo-fi effects
Following on from the release of their Voxcraft vocal-processing plug-in, UJAM have announced the launch of Retro...
30/06/2026
New IR reverb engine, Juno-inspired chorus & more
The latest version of Rapid Flow's hardware-emulation synth plug-in expands on its predecessor with a ...
30/06/2026
Excels at heavy-handed VCA compression
For their latest release, Shy Audio have recreated the crunchy' sound of a rackmount compressor that found its w...
30/06/2026
Component scarcity drives cost increases
Shortly after Apple's CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that cost increases would soon be inevitable , the company hav...
30/06/2026
Hitachi and Bank Pekao S.A. have completed the installation of the first Hitachi...
30/06/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/06/2026
Four-layer instrument aimed at dark electronic music
Excite Audio's latest software instrument has been designed with dark drum and bass, atmospheric te...
29/06/2026
New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more
Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...
29/06/2026
Details environmental policies & results
The Focusrite Group have just announced that following a long audit process, they have published their 2026 sustain...
29/06/2026
Arvato Systems Achieves AWS Cloud Operations Competency
The team behind the AWS Cloud Operations Competency (from left to right: Philipp Hellmich, Johanna Bod...
29/06/2026
RT today announced that Ger Gilroy will join the RT Podcasts team to present a daily sports podcast. Launching later this year, the new show will set the spor...
29/06/2026
RT Commercial announced OUTsurance as sponsor of the Oliver Callan show on RT Radio 1 from Wednesday 1 July.
Oliver Callan doubles the fun, delivering two ...
28/06/2026
Half-size model joins Console 1 line-up
Shortly after the release of their new Flow Studio controller, Softube have announced the launch of another new surf...
28/06/2026
New EXO Series DSP control software announced
EVE Audio's EXO Series monitor range has just gained a new software element that provides remote access to...
27/06/2026
Brings together saturation & lo-fi effects
Following on from the release of their Voxcraft vocal-processing plug-in, UJAM have announced the launch of Retro...
26/06/2026
Virtual session musician plug-in gains new percussion options
Celemony's latest update for their virtual session musician platform complements the exist...
26/06/2026
Half-size model joins Console 1 line-up
Shortly after the release of their new Flow Studio controller, Softube have announced the launch of another new surf...
26/06/2026
ELT Group and Rohde & Schwarz sign a cooperation agreement to explore commercial...
26/06/2026
Flicker Productions to produce five-part docu-reality series following women who have fallen for men in prison and have become TikTok sensations, with brands an...
26/06/2026
Catch up on the latest developments across Baselight and Daylight v7, Nara and F...
26/06/2026
26. June 2026 News
DFT is pleased to announce that a second Polar HQ film s...
26/06/2026
A fresh look at how the Irish helped shape the foundations of the United States
...
25/06/2026
Six free workshops across two days
Global music education platform Music Production for Women (MPW), have just announced a brand new and highly anticipated ...
25/06/2026
Popular pedalboard PSU gets an upgrade
The DC7 v2 is a new and improved version of the renowned effects pedal PSU from CIOKS, and is said to be the thinnest...
25/06/2026
Optimised for lush, enveloping sounds
Described as an instantly rewarding reverb , the latest addition to Arturia's range of creative effects plug-ins ...
25/06/2026
27 June 2026, Westminster University Harrow Campus
GearExpo UK is now upon us, with just two days to go until 150 of the worlds top pro-audio brands and ind...
25/06/2026
alt= data-nectar-img-srcset=https://www.antonbauer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/0...
25/06/2026
Thursday 25 June 2026
Read all about it! The Paper will return for a second sea...
25/06/2026
Thursday 25 June 2026
How to watch the 2026/27 EFL season on Sky Sports
Which EFL matches are Sky Sports showing on the 2026/27 opening weekend?
Sky Sports w...
25/06/2026
Launching today (Thursday 25 June), new RT podcast Ramble with Joe McGucken is a series of curiosity-driven conversations where actor, writer and comedian Joe ...
24/06/2026
Plus: VoiceAssist Basic now available to UA LUNA users
NoiseWorks Audio have just released an update that adds a new Mouth De-Click module to the Advanced t...
24/06/2026
New heavy-duty mic stand joins range
The latest arrival to Gator's Frameworks family introduces a new heavy-duty boom stand that's been designed for...
24/06/2026
Latest major plug-in update goes live
Waves have just announced that the latest major update for their hugely popular plug-in range is now officially availa...
24/06/2026
When assessing cellular coverage, many people look at the signal bars displayed on a smartphone, router or modem. More bars are often assumed to mean better per...
We're back this autumn with a double dose of portrait magic! While Stephen Mangan hosts a brand new series of Portrait Artist of the Year on Wednesdays from 14th October, co-presenter Joan Bakewell is live each following Sunday from 18th October with a sister series of Portrait Artist of the Week. Stephen and Joan will then be reunited in person to host a new series of Landscape Artist of the Year in early 2021.
