It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and I’m driving south along the motorway from my parents’ house in Bray, Co. Wicklow. My journey to Dunmore East will take a little more than two hours. I stop in a service station in Gorey, Co. Wexford, for a coffee and a tasty little apple pie from McDonald’s, and take a call: it’s my old friend Blaise, and I have met my match when it comes to talking a lot. We speak for more than an hour, by which time I have come to know all the big trucks in the truck section at the far side of the car park, and I pull into Dunmore East after eight o’clock, four hours after I have left home.
I am in Waterford for a special reason: the beautiful house of Mount Congreve will be the site of an art event, with plein air events planned for the full weekend, organised by Artform, a fabulous art school in the county. I’m giving a masterclass on one of the days, my first-ever. The town of Dunmore East half an hour’s drive from Mount Congreve is a seaside destination, mobbed in the summer with holidaymakers from Dublin: it’s also home to the Artform HQ, run by the one and only Martina Byrne, at which I am proud to be an instructor. A large sandy beach opens up beside the Strand Inn where Martina has arranged for me to dine, and there are still a few hardy types heading to the water to swim. I am whacked after my drive, and after an extremely delicious meal in the Strand Bar of tagliatelle with prawns, chilli and cherry tomatoes, washed down with a chilled rosé, the lovely Ronan behind the bar gives me directions to my little glamping cabin in the nearby caravan park, where Martina has arranged my accommodation. I lose my way – I always do – but I get there. It’s cute and all I need.
Saturday 4th May
In the morning, I put on uplifting music and drive to Mount Congreve. It’s so lovely to be here. The house, which was built in the 18th century, lies at the end of a long avenue. It’s a skinny drive, and I pull over onto the grass to let a man in a Landrover pass. He rolls open his wondow.
“You’ll want to be careful not to get stuck in the mud,” he says.
I think to myself, “but I pulled over to let you past! That’s the thanks I get!” I am slightly annoyed (being very easily annoyed).
I am a little early so I walk through the gardens, filming a live broadcast for my students. It makes me giddy to think of how cool it is that my students in the USA (the ones who are awake!) can tune in and watch in real time as I walk along paths of rhododendrons and azaleas, as can those in Australia and of course all across Europe. It’s a cold, damp morning, but I am well dressed.
Five minutes before I am due to start, I get lost – of course – and the locked gate behind which I am stuck is eventually opened by the estate manager, Ray, the man in the Landrover. He recognises me and says I’d want to be very careful about getting stuck in the mud. I say that I was letting him past. He says it wasn’t a judgment, he’s just letting me know. I say indignantly that I know it wasn’t a judgment, since I was letting HIM past. It’s not going well.
I am greeted at the very fancy entrance to the house by some students whom I taught “back in the war” – in the days of the Covid lockdown. They are excited to meet me, and, as a person of giant ego, I am mollified. It’s amazing to get to know them in person. My role today is to paint and answer questions, rather than teach formally, but I am not used to staying quiet and when the sketchers arrive shortly after 10.00am, we take our seats along little paths through the bushes of flowers and I am off, talking about my sketching methods. I start with some bluebells and go onto a rhododendron…
After a few hours of intense sketching and chatting (my cousin Ruth and her friend Clíodhna, both of whom are artists, have come along for the day, and we find we have a lot to say), I nip off just before lunch to see one of my art heroes, Alan Clarke, who is hosting a costumed life-drawing sesson in the Walled Garden. His work is as astounding as I hoped.
The pose will be five minutes, but not only am I used to drawing people who are going to leave very soon, but even five planned, unmoving minutes feels like a luxury. After five minutes I have everything done – including the colour – but then Alan extends the pose by another five minutes and I don’t really know what else to add. I deepen the model’s shawl a little. I have my SketchPocket with me so I hae everything to hand, quickly and conveniently, with the tiny paint box attached to my sketchbook by a magnetic clip. Job done!
The next pose is 20 minutes but it’s not noticeably better than the quick one. I am reminded of how much I love sketching a formally-engaged model, but only in clothes – the naked model isn’t interesting enough for me in terms of light and shape.
The sun comes out over lunch, and Blaise has arrived. Blaise, Ruth and I were in art college together – Blaise is a sublime painter, at the very top of the Irish art scene, and we all sit together. I sketch Blaise. The delicate pink of his cheeks and ears is just right, but the right hand under his chin doesn’t stay there and its ghost is in the sketch forever.
By early evening the sun has everyone in a dreamy reverie of warmth, and easels line the lawn behind the house, displaying what everyone has done. I capture a few people looking at the exhibition. Most do not keep still, but I get a satifying ten minutes out of the guy sketching. There’s a competiton to judge four best artists’ work, but I have chosen not to take part as a judge – it’s against my ethos, on many levels. That’s just me, though.
Sunday 5th May
The next morning I find myself walking alongside Ray, the estate manager, to check out the Schoolroom, where I will be starting my masterclass. He’s very nice and he’s funny. I apologise for being lippy the day before. He has no memory of this and I have to go over the whole thing. Then he says if that’s the lippiest I get, I’d need to work on it.
I begin my masterclass and make a mediocre first sketch, some salmon pink azaleas. That’s not a good start for my first-ever masterclass. The class sits amongst the bushes and shrubs in small groups, sketching, painting, chatting, bathed in blissfully warm sunshine. I am lurking around the corner. I come to see how they are getting on.
“There’s a lot of chat going on around here!” I say to the students. “You need to concentrate.”
A silence. Then a voice. “Teacher! Leave us kids alone!” But my point is made. They are here to learn. However, it’s a group of mostly Irish people (and a Venezuelan), which means they will talk if they want, I can say what I want and no one will fall out.
Over lunch, on picnic benches on the lawn behind the beautiful grand house, I tell them I am going to ask more of them. In the afternoon I challenge them to paint white rhododendrons, using a technique that can be applied to any white flowers. It goes better than the azaleas. We end the day sitting on wide stone steps that lead down to the garden, surrounded by huge white, pale pink and cream rhododendrons. The class, scattered through the trees on little chairs, seems to have had a very nice time.
Monday 6th May
I am so taken with this technique for painting flowers that I paint my mother’s beautiful purple iris outside her front gate. I paint blossom-shaped blobs in watercolour then use a dip pen to make rough, expressive lines. I got the nib of the dip pen in a pen shop in Dublin one day, when I was in to buy a fountain pen. After much discussion of pens, the assistant disappeared and came back with a small brown envelope. In it was a steel nib.
“A man came in with this,” he said. “It had belonged to his grandfather, who has passed on. He asked me to give it to someone who would appreciate it.”
I do.
Updates on SketchPocket and Courses
- The second sample of the SketchPocket is due to arrive in my house this week. The photos I have seen look great. The next task is to get cactus leather over to the factory. First I will make them in my lovely Sketch With Roisin canvas, and I hope they will go into prdoction in the next month.
- Two courses coming up: Learn Illustration in Ink and Watercolour through Fun Recipes, 4th-8th June, live and recorded online, and Setching on Vacation, 10th-14th June. Each costs €80 for ten hours, but if you buy both at the same time you get 15% off EACH. Then when you add member discounts it becomes ridiculously good value, and I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t the case.
- Still one place available on my in-person sketching workshop in Galway, 15th-17th August 2024.
- Possibly places on my nature-find sketching course in Dunmore East, Co. Waterford, late September 2024 (I need to check the dates). Contact Artform.ie for more info.
- Residential course in the French Pyrennees in September or October 2025 – expressions of interest can be addressed to me. Atelier Clos Mirabel, near Pau.
- For info on any of this, email me at sketchwithroisin@gmail.com.
