In early summer of this year, I made a grand announcement. I would no longer be teaching online! I hosted a last class during the last few days of May, choosing a subject that had loads of teaching points, and which epitomised Galway City.
My mind was on developing my new bag, the SketchPocket you have heard me go on about so much. While I love business and everything to do with it – the highs, the lows, the breaks (not the tax forms, alas) – I am not a natural businesswoman. I have lost money on ill-thought-out ventures so many times: perhaps the fact that I haven’t given up means I am a businesswoman. Or just a slow learner.
The truth of course is different. I am in business because I could never get a job in art. I couldn’t get hired. Every gallery had no room for me; every artists’ agent and literary agent said thanks, but no thanks; every publisher turned me down; every grant administrator had no funds for me.
I came very close to giving up my search and working with dogs. It wouldn’t have been bad – dogs are so cool – but it wasn’t my calling, even if I was the only person who knew it. In my mid-forties I discovered urban sketching, three years later I started teaching sketching, then at 50 I found my first publisher. A flurry of activity swept me off my feet, as if to make up for lost time, and all of a sudden I had three books under my belt, invitations to teach all over Europe and then, best of all, my own community of global sketch addicts and an online teaching practice. So it’s fair to say I came to business because it was the only option left to me.
And then, in 2023, I discovered that I could marry sewing, design and sketching, and with my scissors and sewing machine I came up with a really convenient bag for sketching anywhere. Enter the SketchPocket: Make Art Anywhere! Through one of my lovely students during a workshop in Galway last year I met the wonderful Stephen, an industrial designer in Belfast. Not only is he an inspired and skilled designer, he has contacts in factories which specialise in bag manufacture. As you can imagine, this is heady stuff: I’m going to go ahead and say it has been as exciting as preparing for my wedding back in 1999. Choosing a fabric for the shell, designing a fabric for the lining, configuring all the pockets and elastics and tabs and zip-pulls and D-rings and shoulder straps…it’s the most exhilharating activity I have experienced as a professional since I came across Danny Gregory’s book Everyday Matters, that was the portal to this beautiful world of sketching in 2012. I am nearly at the end of the design journey, and I expect the first bags to be available in mid-October 2024.
If you’ve read this far…
…then I thank you for your interest. I hope the next bit will be interesting too.
I’m coming back to online teaching! I have missed the wonderful people in the community more than I anticipated, and I keep coming across scenes I have sketched where I think “the guys would find that technique really useful” – this has happened at least ten times over the course of the last three months. I also feel that there is a lot more to explore through sketching, that goes beyond the on-location subject matter that has been the core of what I do: there are ways to teach the vital elements of success in sketching (my way, of course): namely, accurate drawing and learning to use values correctly, that I have yet to fully explore with my students.
Plus, with my grown children fledging and off to university, my house will be a little emptier this term, and I will have time to devote thought to my lessons, and to plan carefully.
There will be a few changes:
- The new format will be more of a club, with limited numbers. I don’t know what that limit will be yet – depends on things like time zones and logistics!
- I will teach four classes a month. There will be no tiers: no Regular vs. Deluxe.
- 90-minute classes will be live over Zoom and will take place on a Monday or Tuesday evening, Irish time (haven’t quite decided which, but the first class is on Monday 2nd September 7.00pm IST).
- That’s morning on West Coast USA, afternoon in New York, late evening in Greece. Sadly I cannot choose a time that suits everyone, everywhere in the world. I would if I could.
- Classes will be recorded and sent to all members.
- We will meet over Zoom the day after class each week to discuss individual experiences with the previous day’s class (the first of these discussion classes is on Tuesday 3rd September at 7.00pm IST).
- I will be available to all club members for advice via email or messenger (hence the limit on numbers).
- The monthly subscription fee will be €50.
- Renewal will be on the 1st of every month, for everyone, and can be cancelled at any time.
- The archives will continue to be available to non-members at a fixed price, and to all members as part of their subscripton fee.
- There will be discounts on products for club members.
- While I will no longer teach sketching workshops in Galway City (although I reserve the right to change my mind on that too!) I will be available for tuition for all club members in person here in Ireland or abroad, either in a solo capacity or in a group workshop. This will be arranged by request on an individual basis, when convenient for all parties.
Current members who DO NOT wish to sign up for the new term
Note: If you are currently an active member, you will be able to access the archives until such time as your membership expires. I had initially meant to cancel everyone’s membership on 31st August, but there has been intense archive-class activity from people who are clearly trying to get in as many of the archived classes as possible, so everyone will continue to have access until their membership runs out. You’ll know your date from your records. Here’s the best bit: I will set the class to be downloadable for the next few weeks, so you will be able to access classes indefinitely, after your membership expires (but make sure to download the ones you want in time!)
Current (or new) members who DO wish to sign up for the new term
The new club membership will be available for sign-ups on 1st September 2024 and the first class will take place on Tuesday 3rd September at 7.00pm IST (Irish time). I will send everyone a join link, pre-class info and a reference image on 2nd September. You will continue to have access to all archived classes.
I anticipate glitches…
It might be a little messy for a couple of weeks so I ask you to bear with me and I will try to sort everyone’s issues out as they arise!
I am really looking forward to diving a little deeper into the beautiful world of art, and exploring our magnificent and unique-to-everyone creativity.
For those of you whom the new format won’t suit, I thank you for all your years of custom, and I wish you every success in your artistic ventures either on your own or with other teachers.
For those of you who are champing at the bit to sign up for the new term, I look forward to welcoming those of you who take art as seriously as I do…
Let’s live life through creativity and colour!
