2023 Was A Beautiful Year

Hello sketch obsessives! Another year over, a new one just begun. 2023 was a truly beautiful year for me…as you will soon see.

Here’s a little story of my last day or two.

It’s New Year’s Eve, around 10.30pm. I am in the living room with my son Paddy and my husband Marcel.

“Well Dad,” Paddy says, “2023? Good or bad?” My husband launches into a contemplative précis of how his year has gone.

I may look peaceful in the black velvety armchair in which I am slouched. But really, I am that kid at the back of the class with their hand up, waiting to be asked…in my mind.

(I am the original “Pick me!” – I have been since I was a child, begging to be allowed to be an altar boy at the weekly school Mass. Failing that, to be picked to do the reading. Or to read out my English homework essay. My arm was always tired from being permanently held aloft. You can see a pattern appearing.)

I wait patiently in my armchair, having developed a bit of dignity in the intervening years. Eventually one or other of the two guys casually drops a “You?”

I can’t wait to tell them how my 2023 has been, as I am bubbling over with joy. And most of it – all but a tiny bit – centres around my sketching experiences.

1. My community

How can I adequately express the happiness my sketching community has brought me? How fulfilling it has been to witness the camaraderie within my group of sketchers, who come from all the corners of the globe, and to see their progress? Some have seen really clear improvement; some are happy they have developed a creative art habit through their presence in the group, while others are there for the sheer pleasure of making art together, and the social aspect of it. I can now count sketchers from across the US, Europe and Ireland as my actual friends. Real friends. Some I have met in person through my workshops in Ireland and abroad, and others only through a screen, and to this day I don’t know if those ones are tall or short, fat or thin. (In case you’re wondering, I am pretty short – 5’4″ – and a little fat, although I am getting back into healthy eating THIS WEEK!) So that’s a major source of my happy 2023.

2. My Sketching Expeditions – The Glamorous Ones

In 2023 I have sketched a crystal-clear lagoon in Crete (into which I dived after the sketch was done); I sketched Paddy in a natural palm forest, looking across a turquoise river estuary, also in Crete; I have sketched in a cactus garden in Lanzarote, and while drinking a perfect coffee in a sparkling marina near the hotel on the island where I stayed with Marcel; and I have sketched a 2000-year-old fast-food joint in Herculaneum, with my mother Cinnie, when we visited Pompeii…here are some of my favourites:

3. My Sketching Expeditions – The Everyday Ones

While turning the thick white pages of my travel sketchbooks brings me back to those dreamy holidays in the sun, I have to say that the everyday sketches that fill all the other pages in my sketchbooks bring me every bit as much gentle joy. Sketching and gathering mushrooms and leaves in the local woods; sketching the evening sky with Paddy splashing about in the sea at my local quay; and the many sketches of Marcel and Paddy and our two girls, Liv and Honor, that make me count my blessings every time I look at them (even if some of them are of my three children playing poker)! Not to get too emotional here, but like most of us I made some very foolish moves as a young person, and it was through sheer luck of the draw, or God’s grace, that I met Marcel and find myself here, with this beautiful family. My sketches bring that home to me strongly. Even the sketch of white lilies that features at the top of the page, that brought me some relief from being confined to bed during a bout of flu, make me happy when I see them.

4. Other Fun Sketching Stuff

I add that 2023 is the year my SketchPocket came into being (the specialised sketching bag designed just for on-the-move sketchers) and the year I visited the Rendezvous du Carnet de Voyage in Clermont-Ferrand, France, as a participant, and then I can’t think of anything else offhand, but at the heart of the happiness I have had in 2023 I always find sketching. Always. Because it brings me into contact with wonderful people and wonderful places.

If you do anything for yourself this year, take up sketching. Or sketch more. Join our community – or do it on your own, or with your local group. But do it.

In the next days and weeks I am going to share my “prompts” for sketching in 2024 with you. Keep an eye out – you will be glad you did!

Happy New Year to all my wonderful readers…

Love, Róisín