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.…
Last 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…
Last 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…
Until 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.…