I have been inundated with requests from you lovely people to attend the free class on sketching gourmet-inclined animals who, despite limitations of physique – feathers for fingers, inability to use a weighing scale or even, for that matter, cook – manage to make food and have themselves drawn in the process. However, I can only fit 100 in the live class. It’s a few days since I announced the class, and I’m nearly at one hundred people who would like to join in the fun: there are still two weeks left of inviting people, because there’s no point leaving spaces unfilled in a free class! But here’s the thing: lots of people want to be there, and then something comes up at the last minute (it’s happened to me, that’s life) and also lots of people can’t make the Live class anyway due to commitments. So if you like the idea of drawing a recipe as cooked by a barely-competent animal, and you already have ink and watercolour or think you can get some by 22nd April, then send me an email to sketchwithroisin@gmail.com with your first name and location (and something about you, I love to get to know you a bit!) and I will add you to the list. You can always watch the recording if you can’t attend the Live, and as long as you watch it in the 25 hours between the end of the free class and course-launch time, you won’t be at a disadvantage.
Even if you’re not in a financial position to take the five-day course, but would love to come to the class, please do come anyway. The only criteria is that you want to have some fun for two hours and push your creative boundaries in a totally unintimidating way. I am so touched by your comments on my blog, and on my YouTube videos, and I love sharing a bit of fun – life is short!
(Read to the bottom if you need a reminder of how this course will work, and of the rapidly-disappearing places left in my in-person Galway workshop in August.)
Sketching Italian Food – Fast And Fresh
There has been a LOT of food sketching in my life of late and I am really loving it. I like sketching food when I have an appetite, and then enjoying it when I know my sketch is finished. It has to be cold food, of course – I don’t let my dinner get cold, as many sketchers seem not to mind doing! – and it’s very relaxing to pour a glass of something refreshing and experience a mixture of satisfaction for a job well done, and that lovely feeling that you’re off the clock. I tried a new technique with the sketch I am showing you here…
For these little beauties I made soft shapes (in the correct respective colours) in very dilute watercolour for each of the little antipasti. Then I used a dip pen with waterproof ink in De Atramentis Document Urban Sienna to give soft, fluid lines. Then I used stronger colour to build up the antipasti, and painted around the negative shapes of the white dishes. Finally I went in on a values-hunt and picked out the dark spots between shapes, and next to boundaries. If you’d like to see the process, you can check out my Instagram Reel which shows you the three main stages of the sketch. It was the subject of Tuesday’s class, which I offer each week to my Deluxe members. They, like me, are always on the hunt for the right balance between accuracy and freshness. It can be done!
Trattoria, Quay Street, Galway
I was in Trattoria in Galway’s Quay Street yesterday to make one last sketch for my second edition of Galway In Sketches And Stories, which comes out soon. My task was to try to capture the warm, relaxing atmosphere of the restaurant, and to show some of the lovely food. This family came in for lunch. I wanted to include them but I didn’t want to intrude on their meal. There was a whole room between us so I figured I could be discreet. However, the gentleman in the hat got up to use the bathroom, and he passed me on the way. Oh no, I thought, I’ll be rumbled. He slipped past me without a comment, but a couple of minutes later I felt a gentle hand on my arm. I assumed it was Seán, the owner, as we’d been discussing the planned sketch at length, so I wasn’t startled. But it was the man in the hat. There then ensued the most lovely exchange I have had as a sketcher for a long time, one that reminds me why it’s so good to get out there into the world with your pen and paint.
“I like what you’re drawing,” said the man. “I like your hat,” I said. “Is it a Tilley?” He said that it was. “Canadian,” he added. I asked if he were Canadian, and he said no, he was American, of Scandanavian and Persian descent.
“You have Persian eyes,” I said. I know what Persian eyes are like, because my first long relationship was with a Persian man in London, back in the 80s. During those years, I learned the glory of Persian cuisine, and I said to the man that I love to make ghorma sabzi for my family. All Persians adore that dish. Persians are a bit like Irish: they are your friend from the first contact (well, some – I remember complaining once to my boyfriend’s sister that I was totally lost because they were all speaking Farsi and I didn’t know what was going on. “That’s why we’re speaking Farsi,” she said, “we don’t want you to know what we’re saying.” And of course there’s a whole cultural mismatch between Iranian mores and Irish ones, like having to ask – or pretending to ask – your brother or father’s permission to do stuff, but that’s a WHOLE other blog post).
The man told me that he and his family were here to celebrate his daughter’s wedding, to an Irishman. He said they were all on their way to Sligo on Friday and that they were touring Ireland to get to know the country of their daughter’s husband. Isn’t that lovely? The man’s name is Michael and his wife is Carmen (she’s next to the window, and is Puerto Rican). She came over to say hello too, and to look at the sketch. The man at the table next to theirs is her brother and all the young women are the various daughters. I felt myself get emotional: I wished the young couple the very best in their future together, and I told them that I spent my first date with my husband in a restaurant across the street and that we have had a very happy marriage, with three grown-up children. We all felt emotional about life and everything, and the daughters came over, and everyone was happy, and Michael said he wanted to tell me all of this because it was a very special time for them and now I was drawing them, and that he was so happy to know that their special time was to be in a book…and he said I had a beautiful energy, which thought I will cling to when I am feeling otherwise.
I asked Lorenzo, the wonderful young waiter from Italy, to bring me something pretty to sketch and he brought me the bruschetta you see in the sketch, and the salad caprese you see in the next sketch. I was a little sorry I hadn’t brought my dip pen and Urban Sienna ink but relieved to have brought – by accident – a spare vial of Document Brown ink when my pen ran out.
Then I turned to face the other way, and I sketched my lovely salad first, then the lovely wooden boards hanging from the wall at the back of the restaurant. I love those vintage posters – they’re always my taste in posters and I have them all over my house (as well as my large colourful jungly canvases in acrylic). As the lovely young Portuguese waitress Joana watched over my shoulder, I shared what I was doing. “Watch how adding the shadows suddenly makes everything look real,” I said. A magic trick!
Then when everything was done, I thought I would add the two “ghost” people on the left. I felt confident putting them in, because of the line technique I would be using. You can just throw the lines on top of whatever you have already drawn and painted, and add a little white gel pen. The woman had been giving me a nervous side-eye when she and her husband arrived, and I didn’t want to intrude, so I waited until she had had a beer to sketch her. That sounds a bit underhand, I think – kind of like I roofied her – but there you have it.
The board was blank, so I asked the lovely Lorenzo if he could write the day’s special on it. When he was done, I told him i would channel his exact handwriting, and I have. (He blushed: he is a beautiful young man in every way, and he is humble. He also loves his mamma and I love my son and they’re both studying engineering and are both far from home and – oh dear, I’m getting emotional again…) By the way, I made that hake dish you see on the board a few weeks ago and it’s delicious, and so quick and easy, and healthy too! I think I might have an animal prepare it. Incompetently. You can see Lorenzo in the Instagram Reel I made this morning.
I staggered out of the restaurants four hours after I started and by the time I had navigated the hour of rush hour traffic and pulled into my driveway, I was exhausted, so exhausted that I thought I was coming down with something, but I’m not, I’m fine. I think I am finding this sketching-on-the-spot thing, when it’s for a specific purpose for which I have a deadline, a little overwhelming. Or perhaps I just need a holiday!
A Final Word…
I have something I want to share with you, because life is short and I don’t hold back if I have an experience that I think might bring comfort to those who struggle artistically, as I did for the longest time. A few people of integrity have told me that they don’t think they should come to my free class because they have no intention to enroll in the five-day course, due to lack of funds. I’ve told them (as I tell you) to come to the free class anyway.
Here’s where I am coming from.
For fifteen years I was given nothing but rejections by anyone who was in a position to turn me down. (You know this story.) I continue to be rejected by those types to this day: I submitted a proposal for something yesterday, for which i will no doubt be turned down. But the internet changed everything for me. I know it’s been a disaster for many young, impressionable people, but for older, wiser ladies like me it’s been a godsend. If it weren’t for the internet and social media, I would still be a woman living in the sticks, with three beautiful children – the real prize, of course – but full of frustrated ambition and no money to call my own, and the freedom and autonomy that goes with that, no matter how saintly and generous your husband might be. Sharing what I do on socials transformed everything for me. Not only did it lead to a means to earn my living through art in which I never compromise, but it gave me a space to grow as an artist, with an audience – turns out for some of us that’s very important – and in the process I have been privileged to make the most wonderful friends and meet the most wonderful people. People who share my sense of humour and get my whole “thing”. I have always had a taste for the irreverent – I was always the class clown and was happy to take a pratfall if it meant amusing any onlookers – but it’s only grown over the years. I have a need for an audience (I think the word I’m looking for is “needy”), because it generates my desire to entertain, and I am so grateful. So I do the odd free class as a way to say a heartfelt thank you, and I am going to offer more in the way of free stuff, you’ll be happy to hear, I hope! Besides – I have plenty of paid offerings out there for those of you who enjoy what I do and like to support me. Have I mentioned how grateful I am to you for that? There are even those extra-generous people who barely attend a class due to one reason or another, but who still subscribe. I know who you are, and I thank you. It’s people like you who inspire me to pay it forward and be generous in turn.
That’s it for this week – keep an eye out for the latest flick-through of my recently-completed sketchbook on YouTube. You’ve seen it all before but – just be my audience anyway, please!
Reminder of courses:
- Free class on Kitchen Critters (name keeps changing, sorry): 22nd April 7.00-9.00pm UTC+1
- Course itself takes place 4th-8th June, same time of day, five consecutive days, €80 with discounts available
- Course is released for purchase at 10pm UTC+1 on 23rd April
- In-person workshop takes place Galway 15th to 17th inclusive, three full days
- Meet-n-greet dinner on 14th in the above Trattoria restaurant (yay!)
- As well as sketch, we will eat together every day (if you want!)
- Two places left on the course at the moment
- Non-sketching companions welcome
- Workshop costs €495 and only has six people, so will be very intimate
- Booking form going up very soon (it’s been pre-booked by some, by sending me €50 deposit)
