I was in Porto, Portugal, last year when this year’s Urban Sketching Symposium location was announced. It would take place in Amsterdam. “You should consider staying in Haarlem,” said Anne Rose Oosterbaan, one of the many Dutch sketchers in Porto. “It’s very pretty, cheaper than Amsterdam – and only twenty minutes away by train.” That…
I’ve had quite the week. They come along like that every once in a while. Last Saturday week I met with members of Urban Sketchers Galway for a really lovely afternoon of sketching. We met on the steps of Galway City Museum on a beautiful sunny afternoon, and to our delight there was a Traveller…
I was to draw a card for a relative. We have a beautiful orchid that lurks greenly in a corner, and then pounces into a dazzling white perfection once every couple of years. How to capture such a pure, such a white, such a delicate thing? With my clumsy hand? Nonetheless, it became my subject……
It’s cold these days. Cold for June. For the first time in a long while, Irish people keep expecting a heatwave to arrive, like we’ve had in the last couple of years. And we’re unimpressed that it hasn’t happened yet: friends sit around and grouch about the cold. “We’re spoiled,” says my friend Lorraine, “this…
You know how it is – you put a proposal in for something, it gets accepted, you’re all “Hurray!” – and then you have to fulfill what you said you’d do. That’s me with my workshop in USk Amsterdam this year. Luckily for me, not only did the proposal have to be planned down to…
Sometimes sketchers visit other towns and look up the local sketchers. We meet for a drink or something to eat and do a bit of sketching together. Today Hélio Boto from Portugal visited Galway with his girlfriend Marlena, and it happened to coincide with a visit from Arizona sketcher Marylin French St. George. We were…
Last night I made a trip to Connemara in the company of Breandán and Colm from my Ciorcal Cómhra (Irish language conversation circle) in our village of Ballinderreen. It was Awards Night, when community groups from all over Co. Galway are nominated and recognised for their work. Our group had been nominated in the Promotion…
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…
or, 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…
It’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.…