Saturday 1487 – 28th January 2012
Hello all,
I’ve been following Artboy68′s 100 Portraits Project for many weeks now. Scott Hamilton, the extremely talented author of the blog, set himself the challenge of making 100 miniature portraits in pencil & coloured pencil in 20 weeks. With a few exceptions the portraits are mostly based on public profile pictures on blogs and he sends the original drawing to the subject if they want them ( and who wouldn’t as they’re lovely )
People who commented on his project early on were in… I was cheeky (surely not! ) and emailed him a couple of photos and he picked a B&W one of me taken when I was about 20 and yesterday I was his number 79. You can see the full post here
This is it –
For some reason when I saw Scott’s drawing of me at 20 I immediately thought of Owen Sheers beautiful poem “Not Yet My Mother” and thought I’d like to share it all with you today so here it is below : -
NOT YET MY MOTHER
Yesterday I found a photo
of you at seventeen,
holding a horse and smiling,
not yet my mother.
The tight riding hat hid your hair,
and your legs were still the long shins of a boy’s.
You held the horse by the halter,
your hand a fist under its huge jaw.
The blown trees were still in the background 
and the sky was grained by the old film stock,
but what caught me was your face,
which was mine.
And I thought, just for a second, that you were me.
But then I saw the woman’s jacket,
nipped at the waist, the ballooned jodhpurs,
and of course the date, scratched in the corner.
All of which told me again,
that this was you at seventeen, holding a horse
and smiling, not yet my mother,
although I was clearly already your child.
.
I love to listen to Owen Sheers reading this. Try listening to him by clicking this here and then clicking on the recording. Such a lovely voice…..
This got me thinking of the passing down of genes and how my daughter Katy, if she hadn’t already seen it, might have looked at the original photo and thought “Oh she’s very familiar” before realising it was me – not yet her mother. …..
People have always said she looks like me; particularly when she was younger..( and when I was younger !!) but less so now.
I don’t know how alike we are, what do you think?
One thing I do know is that we both appear to like sleeping !!
. .
.
My photo was taken by my lovely friend Lisa of Puttyfoot - you can see some of Puttyfoot’s work here
Saturday girl signing off and saying thanks again Artboy!
-
P.S – Here’s my other blog – Photomania
