What Am I Up To Now? [2]

I’m doing a short residency at the lovely Galerie Simpson on Swansea’s High Street and I’m working on something very new and out of my comfort zone……

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I’ve been incorporating text into my work on and off for some years – I’m experimenting with some new pens, Uni Pen Fine Line. Looking good. I need pens to be waterproof and lightfast as well as being good to draw with.

 

I’m also continuing my “en plein air” journey of discovery with prehistorian  Dewi Bowen  and filmmaker Melvyn Williams as we travel along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology, researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way.

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There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

 

What Am I Up To Now?

I’m doing a short residency at Galerie Simpson in Swansea’s High Street and I’m working on something new, right out of my comfort zone. Here’s the beginning……..

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I’m also continuing my “en plein air” journey of discovery with prehistorian  Dewi Bowen  and filmmaker Melvyn Williams as we travel along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology, researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way.

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There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

And Yet Another Beautiful Boomer

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And it’s getting difficult to find titles for my Baby Boomer blogs now that I’ve reached number 83 – I think I’ve done every permutation on Baby Boomer that there is! I’m so loving doing these sketches and having conversations with my sitters, discourses that will eventually feed into the final work, which I hope will be on a HUGE scale. But that’s a while off yet.

 

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

 

 

Another Beautiful Boomer

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As I scrutinise the faces of my sitters, all Baby Boomers, all born between 1946 and 1964, it’s obvious that beauty shines through from within, it’s not something that sits on the surface of the skin. It’s a shame that cosmetic surgery is so popular because it’s the life that is lived and reflected upon a face that gives a person beauty, not the surgeon’s knife. This beautiful Boomer is number 82 out of the 100 I intend to draw by the end of the year.

 

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

 

Beautiful Boomer

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I’ve been working at the lovely Galerie Simpson on Swansea’s High Street today, drawing more Baby Boomers. I’ve now drawn over 80 and I’m enjoying the sketching and conversations. Now that I’m on the home run, I realise how much I’m going to miss these when I reach number hundred. Here’s another beautiful Boomer.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

 

Creative Learning

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I had a great day, working with a group of fellow artists to deliver demonstrations to primary school teachers in a lovely school on the Gower Peninsula. I showed a selection of printmaking techniques suitable for younger children including two kinds of monotype – direct line and reductive, blind embossing and colour printing with collagraph plates, and a quick bit of block printing. It was a whistle stop tour to hopefully whet their appetite for further training. This is part of the Welsh Government’s Creative Learning initiative to expand the creative education received by children in schools in Wales over 5 years.

I did some of the printing in the demonstration with my little pastamaker press – here’s a video (with my cat) showing how to convert a tabletop pasta machine into a serviceable miniature printing press.

 

 

 

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

 

Reconnecting

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Baby Boomer number 80 from the one hundred I plan to draw by the end of this year! I’m getting excited at the prospect of finishing the sketches and planning what to do with them, how to develop the next stage. It’s been wonderful talking as well as drawing. I’m reconnecting with many people from years ago, as well as meeting new ones and working with friends, colleagues and relatives.

 

I’m also continuing my “en plein air” journey of discovery with prehistorian  Dewi Bowen  and filmmaker Melvyn Williams as we travel along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology, researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way.

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There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

Profiled

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This is the 79th sitter out of my target of drawing 100 Baby Boomers before the end of the year and only the third to be drawn in profile. I really like doing this because we rarely look closely at people in profile during our everyday contacts.

 

I’m also continuing my “en plein air” journey of discovery with prehistorian  Dewi Bowen  and filmmaker Melvyn Williams as we travel along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology, researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way.

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There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

On A Roll!!!!

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And here’s my 78th Baby Boomer – I’m on a roll now. Only 22 more portrait sketches to go. A while back I set myself the task of drawing 100 people, relatively quick sketches, 30 minutes maximum into my sketchbook. I wasn’t sure at first how I would choose 100 people. Would they have anything in common? Would they be just random? Eventually I decided to draw my generation and I started just over a year ago, building up a portfolio of ‘Baby Boomers’, people born between 1946 and 1964.

An important part of the whole experience for me is the series of conversations I’m having, discussing the landmarks in our lives, the things that are iconic, the experiences we had. It’s odd that the Baby Boomers are now more or less the elder generation, it seems hardly any time ago we were partying in our velvet loons and platform boots back in the 1970s (and 1960s and 1980s).

I’m also continuing my “en plein air” journey of discovery with prehistorian  Dewi Bowen  and filmmaker Melvyn Williams as we travel along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology, researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way.

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There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit

Cooler Boomer

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I’m continuing my odyssey of Baby Boomer portraits at Galerie Simpson on Swansea’s High Street this month. This sitter is my 77th out of the planned hundred. One thing that strikes me is the Boomer’s large age group, the oldest are 70 this year and the youngest 52, ranging from those who grew up with Rock’n’Roll through the 1950s to the Punk music and culture of the 1970s. Many Boomers challenged society’s expectations and norms when they were young and many still are, refusing to conform to stereotypes of middle aged and elderly people. Which is really cool. I think so anyway.

I’m also continuing my “en plein air” journey of discovery with prehistorian  Dewi Bowen  and filmmaker Melvyn Williams as we travel along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology, researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way.

event-header

 

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder, please click on the image below to take a look. Thank you.

Quoit