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.
