It takes balls to be an Archibald Prize winner. Or to put it a little less crudely, if you want to win Australia's premier portraiture prize it helps if you're a bloke. A lot.

It's an obvious conclusion when running an eye down the winners list from the past 50 years. More than 80 per cent of the selections have been painted by men.

In fact only eight of the winners since 1964 have not been in possession of a Y chromosome.

And that's before you add in the figures from before 1964, when all but two of the winning works were completed by men.

And chaps from that era, it appears, like nothing better than to paint pictures of other chaps. Some 75 per cent of the winning pictures were of (white, naturally) blokes in suits or uniforms, which is why William Dargie​'s winning 1956 portrait of Albert Namatjira is such a breath of fresh air. Not only as it the first Indigenous subject to win, Namatjira is depicted, shock, horror, not wearing a tie.

The gender balance of subjects from the past 50 years is equally skewed, with men making up more than 80 per cent of the sitters.

On a slightly brighter note on the equality front, women artists have triumphed in the past two years (Fiona Lowry last year and Del Kathryn Barton the previous one), which may usher in a glorious era of female ascendancy to balance out all those years of men painting men in suits. But don't count on it.

Winners over the past 50 years have occasionally used materials such as acrylic but one medium has reigned supreme – oils, which make up about 80 per cent of the winning entries.

The controversial 1978 winner, Art, Life and the other thing, famously rejected the dominance of oils, employing materials that included a glass eye, hair, pen, ink, dried glue, cigarette butts and a hypodermic syringe. But then it was Brett Whiteley.

Whiteley's winner, being a triptych, also broke other Archibald conventions, however, its overall size was broadly in line with that of the other winners of the past 50 years. Size does count with the Archibald and the sweet spot is almost exactly three metres square (although that didn't stop Sam Leach striding to the top of the podium in 2010 with his teensy, weensy 60-centimetre x 38 centimetre portrait of Tim Minchin.)

Winning the Archibald is also, most definitely, not a young person's game. If you're in your 20s or even early 30s the best advice is to wait a while before entering. The average winning age over the past 50 years is 47. Whether that's because it takes that long to get really good or just due to plain old ageism is anybody's guess.

So, if you happen to be a 47-year-old bloke and can lay your hands on some oil paints, a three-metre canvas and a willing and preferably well-known sitter, maybe your time has come. Oh, and you'll also need talent. Lots of talent.

The winner of the Archibald Prize is announced on July 17.