Portugal scenes

Q - R - S

 Her majesty the Queen gracing a £20 note

 Ring

 Shoe

M - N - O - P

Myself - rather scratchy self-portrait but a fun exercise!

Necklace

Outside! Sitting on the steps of my flat with a lovely leafy view. Black and white cat from next door came to hang out too.

Peanut butter!

I - J - K - L

Ice pack - this was a last minute one "what can I find in the house which starts with 'i'??" 

Japanese flautist - from some old artwork at the Decorative Artworks Museum in Dublin

Keys! 

Laundry!

E - F - G - H

Earring

Falcon (at the Natural History Museum)

Glass (drawn on a napkin at a friend's wedding!)

(Sir) Hugh Lane (from a newspaper photo)

B - C - D

B is for banana!

C is for chocolate rabbit!

D is for dishes (in the sink - just visible!)

An A-Z of drawing!

So I have recently been doing a drawing challenge with a friend in which each day, we draw something starting with a letter of the alphabet, from A through to Z. We take turns (I did A, she did B, I did C etc.) and send each other the results via the amazing technology that is WhatsApp!! We just completed the first run-through and are now doing it again, but this time doing the letters we didn't do last time. Here is a preview! My A (there is a little creativity allowed - sorry this was A for ankle boots...). More to come soon...

Pen sketch 2

This one is not done from life I'm afraid, rather from a black and white portrait in the newspaper which caught my eye. And led me to look up the photographer, a man from Northern Ireland called Bobbie Hanvey who turns out to be quite a prominent photographer and broadcaster, you can have a look at hundreds of his photos here. 

Pen sketch 1

 I am all about the black pen and plain 15 x 8cm notepad at the moment. It feels like an easy challenge as I don't have much paper to fill - although I do tend to then get quite involved with lots of detail, which is no bad thing. This one is from the local life-drawing class which I occasionally go to. It was probably meant to be a warm-up sketch but I think I then spent at least 30 minutes on it.

We're going to the (dead) zoo! Zoo! Zoo!

Having not been to Dublin's wonderful National History Museum in a while to sketch, I decided to pay a visit this weekend. It's a great old place full of animals stuffed about 100 years ago. Naturally it's pretty busy with families but you can still get some drawing done fairly peacefully. On today's trip  my energy was buoyed by a free coffee from a lovely guy at Lolly and Cooks on Merrion Street who could have made me spend the €5 minimum on my card on finding that I had no change but instead sent me off with a free latte! Then I'd just come out of the cafe to see traffic police holding everyone back so that the Irish rugby team in their big green coach could go past on their way to the National Stadium where they would trounce the French! (Well, beat them at least, I know nothing about rugby to know whether it was a trouncing or a fluke!) Anyway excitement over and it was on the the Museum.


I usually start with something 'easy', in other words small, and for some reason birds seem easier than mammals, maybe because the form is easier to observe on something with feathers than fur??

This pair of wild dogs fighting is something I'd been wanting to draw for a while. There should be a big skull of a some kind of deer in the middle i.e. what they are supposed to be fighting over!

Big giant moose seemed to big a task to draw the whole body but he had such a sad look on his face so I thought I'd just do  that.

Koala bear looked cute in his exhibit box but turned out a little evil on paper!

Young zebra unfinished - I was moved on and out of the museum at closing time before I could add all the stripes! Though maybe just as well as it was probably going to get a little tedious to be honest!