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The Warrior Returns

I started working with this particular model some time ago, when a young student with plans to join the army. I have masses of drawings of him which I developed into many prints – monotypes, etchings and even the occasional painting. We’ve had a gap of several years while he has been away travelling as a professional soldier but we met up again recently and hope to resume our professional relationship in the future. I did a couple of drawings, just some quick ones to familiarise myself with his features. It takes a while to get back into working with someone after a gap, I’m a bit rusty but now I have some drawings to refer to, I can see where I’ve gone wrong and what I need to do.

Tea with me at The Workers Gallery – a chance to see my new solo show with lashings of tea and home-made cakes in the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

Straight Ahead

When I’m drawing Baby Boomers, I let people choose how they will sit for me, whether to look straight ahead, or off to one side, or up, or down. It varies a lot. This sitter looked directly at me but because he’s a lot taller, there’s a surprising amount of foreshortening on his face, with a much larger jawline than there would be if we shared the same eye level. It makes him look much sterner than he really is. He had some cool reflections in his specs too.

Tea with me at The Workers Gallery – a chance to see my new solo show with lashings of tea and home-made cakes in the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

Sharing Experiences….

And another Baby Boomer – I’m getting towards my target of 100 by the end of the year, each drawing a maximum of thirty minutes. But I allow about an hour and a half for each sitter, because it’s such an important part of the process to talk to everyone, about how they feel about being a Baby Boomer, what it means to them. It’s fascinating for me, as we become the ‘elder’ generation, to share the experience with others, to discuss, to take stock, to try and figure out where we’ve been and where we’re going……

Tea with me at The Workers Gallery – a chance to see my new solo show with lashings of tea and home-made cakes in the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

Stalking The Prehistorian

Since February, I’ve been stomping across the wild places of South Wales hunting the wild megalith, stalking prehistorian Dewi Bowen and filmaker Melvyn Williams. I’ve been drawing as I’ve gone along and these drawings have just opened in my first solo show at The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir. Melvyn has been filming throughout the months and has been editing up short films as he’s gone along. Here’s his latest with Dewi talking, in his inimitable way, about the ancient monuments, the ancestral stones and Y Twrch Trwyth (The Boar Hunt).

If you’d like to see the drawings and some more of Melvyn’s films, please come to tea with me at The Workers Gallery – a chance to see my new solo show with lashings of tea and home-made cakes in the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

The Cold War

I carried on with my 30-minute Baby Boomer drawings today at the Creative Bubble artspace. I’m not just drawing, but I also have a conversation with each sitter about what being a Baby Boomer means to them, what has been iconic about our generation. It’s fascinating to talk to each person and now that I’ve drawn 57 people, I’m building up a picture of what’s common to us all and what’s unique about each individual’s experience. The Cold War is something that affected most of our lives and linked to that, the nuclear arms race and campaigns about nuclear power. This sitter wasn’t brought up in Britain and it was so interesting to talk around how different our childhood and adolescent experiences have been.

I started to use a different medium for drawing today, a different make of graphite stick that is much softer than the ones I’ve been using so far and this changed my style, much freer, much more scribbly.

Tea with me at The Workers Gallery – a chance to see my new solo show with lashings of tea and home-made cakes in the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

Back To Booming

After a totally hectic month building up to installing my new solo exhibition in the most excellent Workers Gallery in Ynyshir, I have my life back …. well until tomorrow when I will be drawing some more Baby Boomers. I’m trying to schedule a Baby Boomer drawing day once a week until I finish the 100 thirty-minute portrait sketches that I’ve set as my target.

Here’s one I did in my last Boomer session, a very strong, decisive countenance. I am drawing into my hardbacked, spiral bound A3 size sketchbook with a graphite stick. When I started the series I was using drawing pens, but I think a graphite stick is better suited to 30 minutes as I have to work quickly and freely and drawing pens force me into too much detail.

Tea with me at The Workers Gallery – a chance to see the exhibition with lashings of tea and home-made cakes in the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

Done (In)

All done. Exhibition installed at The Workers Gallery ready for opening tomorrow. I’m plumb tuckered out and ready for bed.

There’s no formal opening but we’re having a ‘Tea With The Artist’ on Saturday September 10th and there will also be an end-of-show event on Friday 23rd so please put these dates in your diary if you fancy a trip to the gorgeous Cynon Valley.

And now to bed. Nos da 😀

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

Shameless Self Promotion

Oh yes! Husb and I are off to The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir tomorrow to set up my solo show, ‘Yr Helfa / The Hunt‘ which opens on September the 1st and carries on through to September the 24th. BUT, we’re not having an opening event, instead we’re having a HIGH TEA on Saturday September the 10th from 2 – 4.

Why not have an opening when the exhibition opens you might ask? Well, it’s because the Cynon Valley Museum and Gallery is reopening on September the 3rd after being closed for over a year. It’s now been transferred from the local authority to a trust made up of volunteers from the area. And they pinched the date I wanted for an opening tea party! Never mind, it’s great to see the Museum back in action and it gives me an extra week to make more home made jam and cakes.

The show features 42 new drawings from my travels across South Wales with archaeologist Dewi Bowen and filmmaker Melvyn Williams, drawing ancient stone monuments that are on the route of The Boar Hunt from the Mabinogion. There will also be a display of etchings and linocuts in progress based on my drawings in the field. And some of Melvyn’s short films about Dewi and myself on our hunt for wild megaliths.

So please drop in and see the show if you’re in the area and especially on Saturday 10th for lashings of tea, cake, art and Welsh hospitality.

There’s more of my art to be seen in my online Gallery in Artfinder. Please click here to visit. Thank you.

The Eyes Have It

When I draw someone, I concentrate so much, it’s very hard work and sometimes it’s only later when I look at the drawing that I get a clear idea of what I’ve done. When you’ve drawn people as much as I have, you realise just how different everyone is and that everyone is remarkable. But sometimes, something about someone stands out more than usual, is even more remarkable, and that’s what happened with this sitter, she has the most extraordinary eyes, so expressive, so poignant.

She sat for me as part of a drawing project I’m doing to sketch 100 Baby Boomers, each in a maximum of 30 minutes. I’ve set myself the target to finish by the end of the year and I’ve reached number 54. I’m drawing with a graphite stick into an A4 hardbacked, spiral bound sketchbook.

Over the last seven months, I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams in all weathers with my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials to draw our ancient heritage. Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

Please click here to visit my online Gallery in Artfinder. Thank you.

The Birkrigg Druids

Here’s another of the drawings I did recently at the Birkrigg stone circle in Cumbria. It’s a magical place and I was lucky with the weather – brilliant sunshine in an otherwise wet and dreary summer. It was unusually clear and we could look out across the sea to Blackpool in the middle distance and behind that, the blue smudge of the North Wales mountains.

I worked with conté crayons in black, white and sanguine and also Daler Rowney artist soft pastels. The paper is Fabriano that I had prepared with several layers of gesso and then drizzled it with my own home-made walnut ink.

The Birkrigg Druid’s is now available to buy on my Artfinder gallery, please click here to take a look.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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