Sketching Course In The French Pyrenees, October 18th-25th 2025 – And A Fashion Faux Pas!

The year: sometime in the late Noughties. The place: the road outside my kids’ primary school. The occasion: pick-up time. I park up and get out of my car to collect my little ones, and as soon as I step out of the car I realise I have made a terrible mistake, and the pick-up can’t happen fast enough, so I can get back in my car and leave.

You see, I’m wearing a bright red fleece zip-up top and navy track pants. This would be bad enough without any other context, as I am not a PE teacher, but there’s another element in play to make my choice of outfit much worse.

The uniform of the school consists of a bright red sweatshirt and navy track pants. All around me is a swirl of red and navy, on quick, young little bodies. It’s a sea of red, navy, youth and energy, and I am like a haggard, slow, pink-faced schoolchild, one who somehow never graduated. Suffice to say I never wore red and navy to the school pick-up – or anywhere, in fact – ever again. I still cringe at the memory of the school pick-up that day.

These days I don’t make such dramatically horrendous dress decisions, and the fact that I made that choice that day renders me forever untrustworthy as a style advisor.

On the other hand, you can trust me as a sketching advisor, and it is my privilege to guide people in the secrets of sketching, through my classes online and in person, and through my workshops in lovely places across Europe. In today’s blog, I am going to tell you about the course I will be conducting in France in October this year.

Fun In France 1975-2023

Since my first camping holiday in France when I was seven years old, I have had a serious love affair with France. There follows a few reflections on time spent in France, and after reading them you may wonder what makes me love the country so much. But when you know, you know.

I am one of the lucky ones who speaks French well. Thanks to my parents’ generosity when I was growing up, I spent a month or two on language-learning trips to France, and my French teacher at school, Mademoiselle Colette (not her real name, but she would have loved it I think), was second to none. Mademoiselle Colette, or Mams’elle as she was universally known, was an Irish woman in her forties who had spent time in Paris. She was a tiny lady, with hair in a sharp black bob, black horn-rimmed glasses and a black beret worn at a jaunty angle. She wore a blue smock on a hunched frame and black drainpipes on thin legs. Her face was lined and sallow from years of committed smoking: I always imagined her discussing Sartre on the Rive Gauche in the late Sixties. The first caricature I ever did in my life was of Mams’elle: the sharp haircut, weak-chinned profile and distinctive spectacles made it easy, even for a 14-year-old. I could draw her now, forty years later. She was a superb teacher. There was no grammatical point that could escape Mams’elle’s hoarse, Gauloise-deepened lectures. I attended at an all-girls’ convent school, and we made Mams’elle’s classroom life a misery, because we sensed difference. I don’t think we were a particularly horrible lot, but the class dynamic was unfortunate in general and that poor woman was at the receiving end of our cruelty. But it is thanks to Mams’elle that I know the correct order of words in French, which she made extremely clear, in looping, neat handwriting, in straight lines of white chalk on blackboard, with underlined blanks along the way that we were to fill in with the missing word. Amidst all the whooping and shouting in the class I was paying close attention, and I sat in the front row. She was an absolutely brilliant teacher and I owe my strong early foundation in the glorious, musical and expressive French language to her. Many of the other girls complained about Mams’elle’s teaching, bemoaning what they perceived to be her shortcomings as a teacher, but that is on them: my French grammar is impeccable, and that’s not because of anything I did. It’s all down to her.

I love the French language, and everyone loves the food, but most of all I love the people. They are unlike any other people in the world, with traits that I think of as quintessentially French. My favourite French friends are self-confident, polite, mannerly, considerate, very funny, lively and exuberant. Their hospitality is generous and their sophistication in matters of behaving in society is inspirational. They love art. As a French speaker I have the inside track, and I love French people. I love that they make their own rules as they go along, if they like you. Of course I have met less wonderful French people – I’m thinking of my landlord when I lived in a top-floor apartment in Paris, and some of my colleagues when I waitressed in Châtelet – but I know that the minute I step on French soil I will be free to be myself, in a way I am not in my own country…even when things are going south. I’m minded of the time I was trying to take a connecting Métro in Paris to get to Charles de Gaulle airport at the end of a trip to the Rendezvous du Carnet de Voyage in Clemont-Ferrand a few years ago.

Travel In France – The Hard Way

It was rush hour, and as I descended the escalator to the train platform it felt like taking the stairs to Hades: after the November rain of the streets, in the heat of the metro the crowd was a teeming, steaming mass of people, packed like sardines, and there was slight movement in the mass, just a slight heaving, like maggots, as that was all that was possible in the crush. I thought that if I went to the very end of the platform it might be a little better, so I picked my way along the platform to the end. It wasn’t much better. I tried to get close to the doors of the train that pulled in, but huge young guys – arriving long after I did – had the youth, strength, height and power to dominate and as each train pulled up they made sure they were the ones to get on. They just shoved women out of the way, like so many paper dolls. Train after train arrived and left and I couldn’t get any closer to the doors. I began to notice the same people missing the train: it was only the women who were being left behind on the platform. At the other end of the crowd, with his back to the wall of the dark tunnel, was a youngish guard in hi-vis, someone who was supposed to keep order. After train 4 arrived and left without me I turned towards him and lost my cool.

“So that’s how it is in France, is it?” I shouted to him across the tops of all the heads. “All the men get on the train and the women are left behind on the platform? That’s nice. Real nice. A lovely impression for a foreigner in your country.” (I would never be so bolshy in Ireland.)

“What do you expect me to do about it?” he said. He actually said that.

At last I squeezed onto a train. I had a plastic bag full of Ardènnes cheese and Ardènnes sausage from my trip to the market in Clermont-Ferrand that morning. The train was so packed that my arm was sticking out at 90º to my body, wedged between people, and I could not draw it towards me to make myself small.

“Ow! Your bag is sticking into me!” said someone, through her Covid mask.

“Really sorry, but I can’t move!” I said, through mine.

This was typical of my Parisian experiences, and horrible though it was, it was better than the way there, when I made the mistake of thinking a taxi to the station where I would catch the train to Clermont-Ferrand at Bercy would be faster than the Métro. Not only did the taxi driver arrive at the train station three minutes after the last train of the evening pulled out of the station, but I had to listen to him swearing at female drivers on the way there, and asking me if women drivers were just as bad in my country as they were in France, as he mounted the sidewalk. Missing the last train meant looking for a hotel for the night, and in the end paying nearly €200 for it (admittedly for a wonderful night’s sleep): it was the night of the Beaujolais Nouveau and suave, relaxed-looking people were sitting outside bistros and cafés enjoying convivial glasses of red in the crisp autumn air. I was half-considering joining them, once I was settled, but a sudden downpour was taking no prisoners and in less than a minute my brown paper bag had dissolved, and the contents fell onto the street, including the takeaway salad thing I had just bought in a kiosk about to close up for the evening in Bercy station. It’s amazing how much extra time on a wet street pavement you’re prepared to accept from your dinner when no one’s looking.

The festival itself, to get to which I was making such an effort, was wonderful, and full of adorable people. Like the French-Portuguese canteen lady who pulled me aside to share her recipe for fish stew when I told her how delicious it was. Volunteers at the festival who went out of their way to help me with my issues. The beautiful friends I made. And the following year – yes, I liked it so much I went back – the following year, above all, the rivers of visitors to my stand who were so warm, so smiling, so generous with their words of appreciation, so sophisticated with their artsitic sensibility, and with their charming, polite, engaged children of all ages.

If you’re as much of a francophile as I am, then read on…

Vignettes of the Pyrenees: A Sketchbook Masterclass18th to 25th October 2025

Travel In France – The Pleasant Way

These days, I make sure to travel in comfort. I take connecting flights, or if I take a train, I make sure it’s not the last of the evening. I try not to rely on a WiFi connection, and I only take a taxi if I have to – and I avoid Paris for connections. So when I travel to France this October for my workshop in the foothills of the Pyrenees, I will make it easy for myself. My intention is to arrive at Atelier Clos Mirabel, near Pau in the foothills of the Pyrenees the day before our workshop begins on Saturday 18th October. I will take a tour of the property, and I might sit on the bench at the edge of the lawn, and contemplate the mountains rising through the mist before me.

Then I will settle into my room and then, I have no doubt, some kind person will offer me a drink.

After that I will take a tour of the house and the art studio…

…and after a nice meal with my hosts I might take a dip in the pool before bed, to wake up to a delicious breakfast of home-baked brioche prepared by the house chef, ready to welcome the students who’ll be joining us.

The theme of the week will be to fill our sketchbooks with impressions and vignettes of the house and the surrounding town of Pau, which I believe is really gorgeous. Someone asked me to explain a vignette. I guess it’s like a snippet of a story, one that we will make in ink and watercolour: letter stamps and any other fun stuff will be very much involved. (By the way, I will have lots of SketchPockets in stock by mid-February, so you will have lots of time to get everything you need for the course.)

It’s the perfect time of year to sketch in the south of France – not too hot, but still dry, and warm enough to dine outside, and maybe even swim in the pool of Clos Mirabel. To me, that’s perfection, just as I like it.

The Course – What It Entails

I am above all a technician, perhaps, hopefully, one with an eye for an artistic take on a scene. I will teach you how to use your materials and while the art bit will come from you, I will guide you into accessing it more easily. By the end of your week, you will be armed with lots of tips and tricks for making your artwork look – well, look amazing. I know the secrets to achieving a page that fills you with pride, and I will share them with you. I’ll teach you how to build a habit so that you will always be ready to grab some time for a sketch – a stolen half hour, a leisurely two hours’ sketch of intention or anything that just catches your eye. I will share my perfecr kit with you, and guide you in how to use it to its best ability. I will show you how to become fluent in the magic trick that is values. I will explain how colour harmony is crucial for a beautiful sketch. I will share my foolproof way to draw well with you. You’ll learn to be confident with composition, with trees and foliage, with quick caprtures of people and I’ll even share my non-traditional, lazy way to get your perspective looking pretty okay.

Throughout our time in Clos Mirabel, we will be together. We’ll eat together, move around as a group and you will never sketch alone – unless of course you want to! In all my conversations with the organisers, I have found them to be extremely efficient and friendly, so I have high hopes for a stay there. In fact, the venue was recommended to me by an amazing teacher, Shevaun Doherty, who has blazed a trail before me. Atelier Clos Mirabel has only been open a few years, but already it has grown in popularity at an impressive rate, and I was lucky to find a date still open for 2025. The course will be conducted in English, but I will be happy to explain everything in French or Spanish if you prefer.

If you like what you have read, and are free to attend this autumn, I believe we have places still available. Here’s a link to more info: https://atelier.clos-mirabel.com/art-tutors/roisin-cure

If I could give you the taxi number of that odious man in Paris, so that you could avoid him, I would, but hopefully he is no longer driving a taxi and mounting the pavement, has seen the error of his ways and is now an employee at a driving school…not as an instructor, but in the capacity of a living example of how not to drive a taxi.

And if you love France, and if my tales of travel torment in Paris don’t put you off making a journey there this coming autumn, then you’re exactly the sort of person I want to meet this October.