Every Tuesday and Thursday I go to a small country town in Galway where my daughter does Taekwon-Do. There’s not a huge amount to do there. I can go to Lidl or Aldi, and usually do, but I have to watch those weekly specials. Now that it’s summer, there’s enough light in the evening to…
Detailsor, Great Things Urban Sketching Kits Come in Small Packages All urban sketchers love mini sketching kits. We crowd around the person with something ingenious and coo as if they’re showing off a newborn. Every now and then someone will say “I think I have the tiniest complete kit” and the other sketchers will rubberneck…
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The king and queen of Sweden visited Galway’s Marine Institute to see work from the Bluefish project. I was invited to lunch…
DetailsIt’s May and it’s paradise here in Galway. It’s hard to find a place that is so totally unspoiled this close to action, but we manage it in this hidden part of Galway. So I don’t need much persuading to head down to the shore with my sketching stuff and an excited white fluffy terrier.…
DetailsLast week I went to the south of Portugal. I was teaching a six-day watercolour sketching workshop: the idea was to share techniques that would demystify some of the more useful, and prettier, effects possible with paint when you’re out sketching in the big wide world. I was anxious leaving, and it’s my experience that…
DetailsLast night was Taekwon-Do night in Gort for my youngest. I usually spend the evening in a combination of aimless driving and aimless wandering the aisles in Lidl or Aldi. This time my aimless driving was to find a nice place for Reuben the terrier to have a run off the lead. That done, there…
DetailsUntil yesterday, I couldn’t have sketched my dobok, the white uniform you wear when kicking around in a taekwon-do session. But I hurt my hamstring doing a flying high kick just over a week ago and after consulting Dr Google at length I self-diagnosed a Grade 2 tear that would take six weeks to heal.…
DetailsBefore we left the house to go to town this morning, I picked up my orange bag that I carry all my sketching stuff in. “Are you bringing that?” asked my husband Marcel, as he does every time we go out together. He knows it means that sketching is a possibility. “Yes,” I said. “But…
DetailsI was stuck indoors today: I have a chest infection and a broken, well, bum (see yesterday’s post about a flying high kick in Taekwon-Do that went wrong). Sometimes you have a workload such that you can’t get sick until it’s all done: that was the case with me recently. My family, with whom I…
DetailsIt couldn’t last. Five classes in to my new favourite sport, Taekwon-Do, and I’m injured. What did I expect? I’m 51 years old and I’ve joined a martial arts class. Yesterday’s session was going swimmingly. Everyone was doing lots of aerobic and warm-up exercises, and as usual I was crashing out panting for breath long…
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