“You’re trying to make something that’s convincing and believable.”

“You’re not necessarily trying to convey personality,” he continues. Back in 2014, Reid was teaching art, which, he says, prepared him for the audience side of things. How much, then, do you get to know your sitter? It is after all an oddly intimate relationship: you are focused on one person, but there is also an audience, all the other artists, plus a television crew and the three judges, Kate Bryan, Kathleen Soriano and Tai Shan Schierenberg. “I’m not saying anything,” he says with a smile, adding that, “Neil Hannon was just a wonderful sitter.” He also admits to regret for the ones who got away, such as Richard E Grant and Stanley Tucci, who sat for other episodes. It is a paradoxical truth that most artists prefer to deal with older, or more characterful faces, so did Reid regret not being faced with Neil Hannon or Colm Meaney, both of whom were also sitters in the heat? Then, he was challenged with painting Sharon Corr at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and didn’t progress any further. This year, Reid received the ultimate accolade, winning the anniversary Portrait Artist of the Decade for his impressively sensitive charcoal drawing of actress Judi Dench, but his first outing on the show in 2014 had been less successful.

Judi Dench and Gareth Reid with Reid's winning portrait of the actress, 2017 The latter’s portrait of Norton won the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year award Graham Norton with the artist Gareth Reid. “My daughters were there, so I was talking to them a lot, but I always have a check and see what other people are doing. “If I’m in the studio, I’ll stand and paint, then get distracted, go away and look at something, and then maybe go back to another painting… But to stand in one spot, trying to make something for, you know, six hours or whatever, you just want to get away.” Stretching helps, as does deep breathing, and yes, wandering around looking at other people’s work too.

“I can’t tell you how pathetically tired I was,” Reid recalls. Do the artists also use the time to scoot around the set and get insecure looking at what everyone else is up to? Yes and no.

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