It’s Been Intense But I Wouldn’t Change A Thing

November is here and I have started to exhale at last. Back to writing my beloved blog. I hope you noticed my absence. I shall be greatly offended if you did not.

It’s been intense.

In August I taught for the Urban Sketching Symposium in Poznan, Poland and picked up Covid. Spent much of the week blowing my nose or crying, or both.

In early September I was due to teach for the 7th Swiss Urban Sketching Symposium in Geneva, but I cancelled because I was due to fly out only a week later, but then I “uncancelled” the very next day as I tested negative after only two days and recovered quickly. Must have been a headache for the organisers.

After Geneva I had two weeks in Ireland, but spent much of those travelling back and forth to the east coast as my father has been ill for a long time, and became more so. It’s emotional, but I love my poppa and I am grateful he is still with us.

Then came a sketching course in Waterford, in the lovely Artform art school, right on the coast in Dunmore East. Swimming was had.

A few days later I went to Malta for a holiday with my family. There was a lot of wonderful sketching, a lot of thunder and lightning and a lot of delicious fresh fish.

In late October I spent a simply amazing week in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, near the city of Pau, where I taught a fun and lively group, in the heavenly grounds of Atelier Clos Mirabel. At the end, nearly every participant said to me that the week had far exceeded their expectations: Xavier and Rachel have created something very special in their lovely manor house in the hills.

It’s all quiet now, which is why I am starting to exhale, although my father is still very ill and my mother is moving house, so it’s not time to put the feet up just yet…

But there’s an encore before the quiet of winter! Did you know I am teaching a two day workshop in Enniskerry over the last weekend in November? This one will be a sort of indulgence for me: I have been obsessed with children’s illustration since, well, childhood, and I will be teaching people to draw and paint like Beatrix Potter, Jean de Brunhoff, Maurice Sendak, Richard Scarry and Dr Seuss…unsurprisingly it’s filled up fast but you can check to see if there are still places by contacting the Schoolhouse for art in Enniskerry. What could be nicer than a creative, cosy weekend indoors in the wintry Wicklow Mountains? It takes place on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November – prepare to release your inner child!

My job is truly delightful – I teach wonderful people the magic of sketching, illustration and graphic memoir – but after the intensity of the last three months, I will be more careful about taking on too many things back-to-back.

Well, that’s what I thought. That was BEFORE I spent the magical week in Atelier Clos Mirabel and discovered how amazing it can be to spend a week with old friends and new, members of my family, and generous hosts, in a stunning location being served stunning food…

The sketching course in Italy, October 2nd-9th 2026, is an example of this kind of idyllic, slow travel. We’ll travel to Montelparo, a little village in the hills of Le Marche, in the height of truffle season, for a week of sketching in the surrounding hills and countryside. We only have a few places left, so if it sounds like the perfect vacation to you don’t delay – contact Madeleine at Hotel Leone pronto! If it is anything like my recent trip to France I think it will be very special indeed (I will tell you all about that trip in another blog dedicated just to that).

And I may return to France in 2026. I have applied to teach at the next Urban Sketching Symposium, which takes place in Toulouse in July 2026. I may or may not be successful with my proposal, which described how to get the participants sketching in the local indoor market, with a very tiny palette of colours. By coincidence, we did this in my course in the Pyrenees a few weeks ago and the students found it exhilarating, a whole lot of fun and creatively satisfying. When I submitted my proposal for USk Toulouse in late September, I didn’t think of the market sketching I would soon be doing in Pau and Jurançon only a month later, because I had forgotten. I just thought it would be a fun thing to do at the Symposium, to get out of the sun and learn how to capture people at the same time. So when I was reminded it was on the schedule in my course at Clos Mirabel I was excited to see how it would work in “real life” – it’s just a theory until you try it out with real students.

And I couldn’t have been happier. The directive I gave the students to stick to five colours worked a treat: everything you see here was done with the five I chose (ultramarine, nickel azo yellow, burnt sienna, phthalo green, permanent carmine). And it was all done entirely on foot and on location, apart from going over the writing on the labels in white gel pen afterwards. It’s SO much fun – the vendors are always super-psyched to be the subject of sketches.

But whether or not I am accepted as an instructor to USk Toulouse next July to do this exceptionally fun and instructive workshop, I may or may not also teach again in Atelier Clos Mirabel shortly afterwards. So as of today, I might teach once in France in July, twice, or not at all. I will know the answer to both propositions by the end of November. You will have to watch this space – I promise I will tell you as soon as I know, to give you plenty of time to get your travel plans in order. I have no control over whether you get to sign up for a workshop in USk Toulouse, but I do over a course in Clos Mirabel, which as of yet has not been confirmed.

Other than that, I will be teaching urban sketching for one day in Kinvara, Co. Galway in early June 2026 for teenagers (I love teens!) as part of Kinvara Plein Air 2026 – all teenagers welcome from anywhere at all – but other than that I am going to concentrate on my MANY projects.

Here they are – prepare for your head to spin:

• Teaching sketching online every Monday (four classes per month, free trial offered)
• Teaching illustration every second Wednesday (two per month, €10 supplement with the free trial)
• Teaching a graphic memoir course for Vivify.ai (watch this space)
• Finishing my graphic memoir about me and my dad (just submitted to a comics publisher, we’ll see what happens)
• Marketing, selling and mailing my SketchPockets (order soon to get it in time for Christmas)
• Finishing my comic-book-style sketching manual, called Sketch Manual (it’s SO cute)
• Writing my memoir about how sketching saved my life, called Sketch Therapy (it’s a bit hair-raising)
• Making weekly YouTube videos about sketching (omg SO fun to do)
• Writing this blog (my dad always said “just don’t be boring!” – I hope it’s acceptable)

Oh and before I go – my course is confirmed for Atelier Clos Mirabel in July 2027. I am not sure of the date but I think it’s the last week of July. There will be dinners on the terrace watching the sun set over the blue hills of the Pyrenees. There will be frolicking in the pool. There will be apéritifs and glorious meals made with fresh produce from the garden, prepared by gifted in-house chefs. There will be intense creative fun with your fellow sketchers. There will be food sketching and trips to the market to capture it all in ink and watercolour. At least four places have already been booked (the recent participants had their favourite bedrooms in mind!) so give it serious thought. I promise you a trip you will never forget.

And it looks like I will also return to Lagou Raxi in Greece in early May 2027. A week of sketching wildflowers under olive groves, beautiful churches and Greek ladies in traditional Easter dresses, dancing to the strain of the local fiddlers. Sound tempting?

Now then…a certain YouTube video is waiting for me to start filming. And Reuben needs a walk. I’d better get cracking. If you are not yet subscribed to my channel and you like what I do then what are you waiting for?

Thanks for reading – more soon, and have a nice Sunday!