I want to tell you a story about colour. A colourful story, if you will. When I first started sketching, I was a bit “AI” about it, a bit of a computer. My process was as follows: 1. Look at the scene. 2. Record the shapes you see with a pen. 3. Now colour them…
Whatever your resolution is, it’s bound to be ambitious, good for you and something you feel you didn’t do enough of in 2022. For me, that’s keeping fit and making my body look better. In September of 2022 I started seeing a personal trainer in a gym – well five of them – and have…
Last January I announced two urban sketching workshops for the month of August. Each would last two and a half days and would take place in Galway City. The last one I had run was late in 2019, which is a big gap – this one would be just short of three years later. Since…
This article first appeared on Substack. It’s free for everyone there, and here: however, if you like what I write and draw, then please consider becoming a paid subscriber on Substack. Because I have been honoured with some paid subscribers, that is where I will share my soul’s deepest thoughts, for their enjoyment only. Warning:…
Endless summer days are meant for sketching. I get many chances to sketch this week, with and without screens.
I spend a few days sketching with my mother, Cinnie, in the Burren, Co. Clare. We have a simply marvellous time.
All about a week of sketching and teaching in the Auvergne, France, at Clermont Dessine, with good friends.
Monday 6th June It’s a Bank Holiday in Ireland and there’s a talk on in the Burren Nature Sanctuary. A guy is coming to talk about barn owls. I ask my family if they would like to come along. “We’re going to meet Erin the barn owl,” I say. My son Paddy (20) immediately agrees,…
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…