Welsh Art

In the wonderful weird world of Twitter, you can find yourself meeting new people in rather random ways, and discovering new friends and useful contacts. Recently someone started following me and I went to see who this new follower was, as it didn’t appear to be one of the delightful spammers you often find on Twitter! It turned out to be Chris Chalk, a very talented local artist, with a website full of lovely paintings I was really taken with his paintings – mainly beautiful landscapes from around this area of Wales so I kept looking at them and thinking how lovely they were … until I decided to buy one (well, a print of one).

I chose this one, called “Dolgoch landscape, Cambrian mountains”:

Dolgoch landscape, Cambrian mountains by Chris Chalk
(photo from Chris' website)

This painting appealed to me in a couple of ways – firstly it just reminds me of how much I like going for walks in the hills, despite the fact that I so rarely go walking these days. When I used to go for walks more I would often stop to take a picture at a point like this where the path went on ahead, and a new vista opened up. The other reason it appeals is the feeling it gives me. I used to be a bit cynical about people talking about “how does the painting make you feel?” … the kind of art I liked was art that looked like the real thing – the more realistic the more impressed I was – it wasn’t about feelings. But looking at this I feel hopeful, and it makes me think about reaching a point in life where you have to choose whether to step through the gate and through the field into the unknown, or turn back and stick to the safety of places you know. And stepping through looks like a good thing, a hopeful, happy thing. So it makes me feel good looking at it.

Explaining all that makes me feel a bit daft. Hope you don’t think I’m a bit odd, dear reader. But there you go – this is how I feel. And this is why I bought this print, and wished I could buy the real thing.

Here’s my print – I don’t know where it’s going to go yet, so it’s just propped up in the kitchen at the moment, still in it’s plastic wrapping to keep it nice. Thank you Chris for painting a lovely picture, and for the fast professional service

Getting Sketchy

I used to enjoy sketching, way back in the olden days, when I was at school. I enjoyed Art lessons and also enjoyed drawing things for Biology like when we had to cut a buttercup in half very carefully and draw what we could see and label all the parts. I was never any good with colour though – paint or pastels – so my drawings remained black and white, in pencil or charcoal. I never took the Art further, don’t think I was anywhere near good enough, but it was always something I enjoyed. I haven’t sketched for years and recently I have been thinking about what I would do with my time (if I had any spare) and sketching was something I remembered liking to do. So I bought some new pencils and charcoal and a sketch pad, and sat down and gave it a go. It was a bit weird at first, looking at the blank page, wondering whether I would manage to create anything that looked remotely realistic … I decided to get my phone out and find a few photos from Facebook and have a go at sketching them. So, to cut a long story short, that is what I did – and now I am being very daring and have scanned my first sketches and here they are for you to see. Be gentle, I know they’re not great, but I was pleasantly pleased to find they’re not too painful on the eye! I started with the robin, had a go at the village church and finally did the swan. I like the swan best so I’ve included a cropped scan of it. You can click on either of them to see a bigger version.

So there you have it – an old hobby resurrected. I hope to be able to find the time to sketch a bit more here and there. Not sure I’ll be posting loads of pics on here, but that’s not the point. The point is that I have rediscovered a part of my self that has been hidden for a long while, and it was good to do that