Typically, Terrain's gallery space on North Monroe Street is filled with local art, patrons eager to appreciate the talent of our region's artists and the artists in question.
But every other Saturday, the gallery takes on a new form. It's not so different from the space's weekday offerings, but there's a bit of a twist.
As a self-described chronically punctual person, Jake Gillespie usually gets there well before 10 am. He sets up his Bluetooth speaker and organizes the art supplies he's brought with him.
Until moving to Spokane four years ago, Gillespie — an artist himself — had been attending small meetups called drink and draws in Denver, where artists got together for a few hours and drew portraits of one another in their respective mediums.
After getting to know Terrain's leadership power duo Ginger Ewing and Jackie Caro while volunteering at the various events the nonprofit puts on, he proposed using the gallery space as a place to host a portrait club of his own. They accepted.
Since September 2024, the Heads Up Portrait Club has been going strong with nearly 20 local artists getting together every other Saturday to revel in the craft of portrait drawing.
"You don't have to be 'quote unquote' good at drawing to come to Heads Up," Gillespie says. "It's intentionally designed to be free and completely accessible for everyone."
Gillespie's Bluetooth speaker projects the voice of Bryson Wallace, a host from Portland's KMHD radio station, throughout the gallery. Wallace's jazz radio show, Positive Vibrations, has become a staple at Heads Up Portrait Club meetings.
As attendees start to funnel in and take their seats, the room fills with chatter, hugs between friends and palpable excitement. Nearly everyone in attendance is beaming from ear to ear, bopping along to Wallace's smooth tunes and prepping their paper and pens for two hours of drawing.
Each meeting features a series of portrait drawing sessions ranging from one to 20 minutes. Everyone in the group chooses another member to draw at random while also being drawn by others.
Gillespie sets a timer for one minute, and the group begins their first portrait of the morning.
"It doesn't give you the time to intellectualize anything," he says. "It's action and reaction. The time restraints make it so you don't have the luxury of hemming and hawing. You just have to draw it or don't."
While the club isn't anything close to an instructional class, Gillespie says he's learned a lot and has watched other artists progress in their artistic journeys by participating in Heads Up.
"The limitations are helpful," he says. "Learning to draw people in real life as they're moving changes the perspective, it changes the shadows, the environment is never quite the same. So you can't achieve perfection. I think a lot of artists, myself included, get bogged down by things like accuracy, and you can't get caught up in that at Heads Up."
Each time the timer beeps, a cacophony of sighs and excited yelps fill the room as the artists turn toward each other to reveal their completed portraits.
No medium is discouraged at Heads Up as long as it stays relatively neat and tidy. There are portraits drawn in pencil on paper, with markers, on iPads, in notebooks and — in local artist Toby Keough's case — with oil pastels on paper bags from Grocery Outlet.
Some drawings are black and grey and extremely detailed, while others are strikingly monochromatic. For a bit of fun, some try to draw an entire portrait without looking down at their papers. There's no right or wrong at Heads Up and with each artist drawing in their own unique style, every portrait is completely different and will never be drawn the same way again. Each person witnesses a one-of-a-kind moment, making every club meeting special.
As time ticks on, the portraits get more and more detailed, and the reactions become heightened with people walking around taking photos of other people's creations during breaks. Often, the person who was drawn will take a photo holding up the portrait of themselves — a compliment to the artist.
The club has been going strong for over eight months, and Gillespie is beginning to broaden its horizons. In April, Heads Up set up shop in Neato Burrito and drew portraits of community members who bought food or supported the business in any way.
"We're starting to set up other things," he says. "I want to start doing similar things to what we did at Neato out in the community."
He mentions wanting to try to make a positive impact with the club, and helping raise money for causes important to its members.
"There are so many possibilities," he says. "And so many benefits for our members and for the community."
Gillespie urges that you don't have to be an artist in any way to attend Heads Up. Even if you go just for the good vibes, positive energy or the silky smooth voice of Bryson Wallace emanating throughout the gallery, you'll be welcomed into the community with open arms and pencils at the ready. All they want is to draw smiles — literally.
"We're artists," he says. "We just want to look at stuff at the end of the day. Come and draw!" ♦
Heads Up Portrait Club • Every second and fourth Saturday from 10 am-noon • Free • Terrain Gallery • 628 N. Monroe St. • Instagram.com/headsupportraitclub
