I appeared (very briefly!) as a "wildcard" on Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2023 (S8 E1) last week. It was filmed in Blackpool last June.
I've watched the programme for a few years so it was good to see how it is filmed, edited and put together. I had three separate interviews on the day with Tai Shan Schierenberg, Kathleen Soriano, and Joan Bakewell. The first two took around 5 minutes each to film, but as you can see in the video below, I was only on screen for about 15 seconds.
It's an early start. I got there around 6.30am. There's a lot of waiting around before you're allowed to start painting. You register, get your canvas/paper/board etc. stamped and then they take you to the spot where you will paint. From a plein air point of view, it's quite restrictive as the area you are allowed to work in is around 100m x 100m and you have to jostle with another 40 or so artists, some of whom have huge set ups (someone even brought their own pop-up tent thing to sit in) and block your view. There were some artists who that wasn't a problem for, as they took a photo at the start and then stared at their device for the rest of the day.
It's a long day. They announce the wildcard winner around 3pm and then invite everyone to head over to see the main artists in the pods. My wife, my mum and I all wanted to stick around to see them announce the winner but it took forever so we left before that was filmed.
Anyway, here's a short clip I filmed on my phone as I watched the episode at home, along with some photos from the day.
