Here is number sixty nine of my Baby Boomer drawings. I feel like I’m on the home run in my quest to draw one hundred Baby Boomers by the end of this year. The conversations I’m having are inspiring the next phase of the project – I’m not just going to leave it at a hundred portrait sketches – plans are afoot!
Please drop by on the last evening of my solo show at The Workers Gallery for tea and art, cake and conversation.
This is Baby Boomer number 68. I’ve been getting through these 30-minute sketches quickly this month at the Creative Bubble Artspace. I have been looking through the first of this series, started about 18 months ago, and they’re much tighter, more structured and detailed, using fine nib drawing pens into an A5 sketch book. I changed over to graphite and an A4 format a few months back and it has freed up my style enormously. A lot of the marks I am making now are intuitive, automatic and not planned, thought out or considered. These recent drawings are so much more expressionistic and expressive than the early ones. They’re not automatic drawings in the Surrealist sense, but for at least part of the process I have suspended my focus and concentration and something else takes over. It then becomes a surprise when I look at the drawing a few hours later and see the marks I have made; it’s generally a pleasant surprise. That’s good.
Please drop by on the last evening of my solo show at The Workers Gallery for tea and art, cake and conversation.
I’m having a very productive period drawing Baby Boomers this month and if I keep on at this rate, I’ll finish by my target, of 100 sketches, by the end of the year. I love the conversations I have with my sitters and I write the main points that come up on the back of each drawing. It’s building into a collection of thoughts and opinions as well as sketches. They are all fine faces with life written into every nuance.
Please drop by on the last evening of my solo show at The Workers Gallery for tea and art, cake and conversation….
Drawing Baby Boomer portraits has been such a good experience, I’ve learned so much, developed my skills and techniques, pushed my materials, and gained a greater understanding of how different faces are. I know that sounds like stating the obvious, but even people who have a similar stamp, even people who are related, when you look at them closely are really quite different. This Baby Boomer has such a strong face, so emphatic, radiating strength.
I’ve now drawn two thirds of my 100 Baby Boomers and one thing I’ve noticed is that most people’s ‘resting’ face is quite serious but a couple of people have had really smiley resting faces, keeping their smiles effortlessly for a half hour without their expressions becoming fixed and false. Genuine smiley faces.
Here’s another Baby Boomer – I am so enjoying drawing my generation at Creative Bubble Artspace. So many fabulous faces, so many interesting stories to tell. The conversation I have with my sitters is just as important as the portrait sketch; I have my own thoughts and views on what it means to be a Baby Boomer but other people’s experiences are sometimes similar, sometimes so very different.
Please come and visit my solo show at The Workers Gallery and you’re very welcome to come along to an ‘in conversation’ event right at the very end – there will be cake!
And another Baby Boomer victim of my insatiable sketchbook. They generally seem quite laid back about it.
I held a ‘Tea With The Artist’ event at The Workers Gallery at the weekend, part of my solo show “Yr Helfa / The Hunt“. It was lovely and lots of people came along, from as far afield as Bristol and Birmingham, Cardiff and Swansea as well as local people.
That meant a lot to the artists who run the gallery, Chris and Gayle, who have worked so hard to get this off the ground in the village’s closed-down library.
It was hectic and I tried to get around and talk to everyone who came.
And there were people of all ages too, which is really lovely. I don’t like those evening private views which are full of posing types clinging on to a glass of wine – I like to see loads of different people having a nice cuppa tea and enjoying the company and the art.
And the cakes. Oh yes. Home made, of course. Traditional bara brith, Victoria Sandwich, some parmesan biscuits, a lemon and elderflower drizzle sponge and dairy-free, gluten-free orange polenta cake. It all went.
So, thanks to everyone who came along and to those who sent their support, I really appreciate it. And if you missed it, the show runs until September the 24th.
Filmmaker Melvyn Williams in conversation with prehistorian Dewi Bowen and artist Rose Davies (that’s me) with lashings of cake!
19:00 to 20:30 on Friday the 23rd of September at The Workers Gallery, 99, Ynyshir Road, Ynyshir, RCT, CF39 0EN.
Coming soon – cake and conversation, art and archaeology, mountains and megaliths, history and hailstorms…..all at the lovely Workers Gallery. Melvyn has been following Dewi and me across the wild places of South Wales since February, through mud, muck and mire, tracking down megaliths on the legendary Trail of the Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the tales of the Mabinogion.
Dewi has been researching his new book on these ancient monuments, ‘Hunting The Wild Megalith’ while I have been drawing these incredible stones for my solo show ‘The Hunt / Yr Helfa’ at The Workers Gallery.
And all the while, Melvyn has been walking with us, across the Neolithic Welsh landscape, filming the art, the archaeology and the awe-inspiring environment, fending off wild Welsh ponies determined to liberate the lunch boxes.
Please join us for an evening of conversation, tea and cake in this lovely gallery. My exhibition of drawings will be finishing on the 24th.
And another Baby Boomer. Someone was looking through my Boomer sketchbook yesterday and mentioned that as he turned the pages, it was the eyes that immediately draw the attention. This is why I prefer to draw from life rather than photos, I can see the expressions up close, the real expressions that flicker across a face over a half an hour, rather than the fixed, posed stare of a photograph.
I currently have a solo show of drawings being exhibited at the lovely Workers Gallery in Ynyshir in the Cynon Valley. It’s a nice day out, the area is gorgeous and there are some great drives and walks aroundabouts.
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