Perhaps I should have heeded the warning of John Singer Sargent.

He was the greatest portrait painter of the late 1800s Gilded Age, and one of the most revered of all times, but Sargent was only in his 30s when he realised the great danger in the unbalanced equation of vanity plus truth that was his life's work.

"Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend," he sighed.

As I stood in the studio of one of my oldest and dearest friends, awkwardly holding the pose for an entry into the Archibald Portrait prize for 2026, I prayed that Sargent was wrong.

I also remembered that Sargent said something about a portrait not being about getting a "likeness". Now I started to wonder what on earth I'd got myself into.

Turns out I need not have worried: that portrait of me by the contemporary artist, Stieg Persson, has been shortlisted for the Archibald.

The Archibald Prize is the Mardi Gras of Australian visual art.

Since 1921, when the editor of the Bulletin, JF Archibald, founded the prize, the trustees of the AGNSW have awarded the best portrait of a "distinguished figure from art, letters, science or politics".

The competition has specific rules: a time frame the work must be started and completed in; and a requirement that the work be painted "from life" — you must stand, feeling like a fool, in front of that artist for as long as they need you.

I'd been painted for the Archibald once before, back in the early oughts, by another old friend, the artist John Campbell, and that one had been politely declined but it ended up in the slightly groovier "rejection" exhibition, the Salon des Refuses.

This one, however, had been a long time in the making.

My friend, the artist Stieg Persson, and I have spent many years tossing about the idea of an Archibald entry.

We are both fascinated by the traditions and language of portraiture: subject, composition, light and meaning. But we are also intrigued by the uneasy relationship of favour and flattery that defines the painter/portrait relationship. From the Medicis to the Meyers, the uncomfortable system of working for rich patrons nonetheless produced great and immortal paintings.

Along with the other 19th century greats, Sargent is one of our favourites. A painter of immense delicacy and careful touch, he was also capable of a keen psychological realism, even though he said he only ever painted what was in front of him.

The rich and powerful of London, Paris and New York commissioned Sargent for a work of beauty and flattery — and that's what they got, but they also inadvertently received a visual essay in how strongly they strove for taste, class and standing.

But what is the point of a painted portrait now, when an iPhone can cut out the sly intervention of the artist and provide more of that flattery, with filtering, than even the shrewdest court artist could?

As Rachel Griffiths discovered in her excellent series on the Archibald Prize, there is something about the transaction between artist and sitter — a vulnerability, a trust and a declaration — that continues to draw crowds of Australians, year on year.

Sometimes it's to exclaim at the skill of the photo-realist painters — how do they make paint look like a Polaroid? Or to see if some undisclosed truth is revealed in the portrait of their favourite celebrity.

The painter's skill is still, after thousands of years of the art, a thing of wonder, and I love seeing a visitor lean slowly towards the canvas, eyes narrowing then widening — how did they paint that?

On my first visit to the studio, I was taken aback by the stack of new canvases Stieg had obtained. These smaller formats were to be all the studies for the final, large canvas: attempts at bits of head and back, several versions of my dog Cora, tests with techniques of colour and glazing.

This was going to be a lot of work.

My job was simply to stand and project… what? I tried to assume some sort of air, a feeling of presence, dignity. But after a while you completely forget what your face is doing and just fall into reverie. Maybe that's the artist's skill: waiting and watching for that moment.

It is an undoubtedly romantic feeling, standing still and listening to the almost silent brushstrokes, only because of the incredible history that stretches behind you: every great portrait you can think of started this way.

I love that Stieg captured Cora's customary look of bewilderment, and that the picture celebrates many aspects of Melbourne in the one frame, including a design by the Melbourne-born couturier, Martin Grant.

The work now sits in the exhibition alongside people I know and want to know and will tour regionally after several months in Sydney. Go and see the show, pick a favourite and widen your eyes before a format that a six-inch screen could never hope to match.

This weekend, let's remain in art mode with a couple of terrific reads on some well-known street art and a possible art fraud.

Have a safe and happy weekend; this is what I'll be playing as I dance around the room with my reluctant Cora, in just a little celebration of an age-old tradition. Go well.