Wednesday 25th June I am a believer in “drawing in the cracks” and so I sketch the view from the post office in my village, while I wait for the kids (my girl Liv and her classmate and friend Mattie, who I bring home twice a week) to arrive off the school bus. I can’t…
Monday 9th May I want to paint the roses my lovely family bought to welcome me home from hospital, and I finally get my chance late on Monday evening. I can’t get my view right – on the table they’re too high to see the blossoms, and on the chair they are so low they…
I get a fever, everything goes pear-shaped and I end up spending ten days in hospital.
Saturday 16th April The subject for my sketchalong class is a well that my daughter stumbled upon in a field up the road from us in Kilcolgan. We get it all drawn, but have only got as far as the moss and reflections at the end of class, even though it’s gone over time by…
Saturday 9th April The day starts off really cold – in fact there is frost on the grass when I go outside to my studio. But it starts to look better and my youngest, Liv, and I head into Galway City. She wants to buy shoes and I don’t want to join her in her…
A busy week of sketching takes in Galway City and County: people, animals and landscape all feature this week!
Saturday 15th August I’m restless. I want to make the most of my free Saturday. It’s warm, but not so sunny. I want to go into town to sketch the Potter’s Market, which will be in Galway City for just one weekend. I hop in the car with my son Paddy (18) but have not…
Tuesday 21st July I dropped my children, Paddy (18) and Liv (16) to the sailing club to start their new jobs as sailing instructors. It was a grey day but I had been sketching in a 5km radius, or less, for many months, and wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The…
Friday 26th June “For every old sock, there’s an old shoe.” I stop by a French bakery on the outskirts of Galway City, wait in a socially-distant queue and buy all the pastries I can reasonably buy without looking like I haven’t eaten for a month. I am celebrating: twenty-one years ago, in a tiny…
Sunday 21st June There’s a place I have sketched many times. It is called Killeenaran Quay. It has colourful boats and a wall with a bridge, and sea and seaweed, and loads of sky that is usually a celestial canvas of something dramatic and beautiful. When I arrived last Sunday I dropped down over the…