In Colombia!

I am in South America! Here is Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator, commemorated in squares, on bank notes, in street names, in country names, all across the continent. He apparently visited Salento in 1830, the same year he died. It is probable as apparently the main road from Lima to Santa Marta went through Salento. Lots of place names. Look on a map!

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!

Christmas time!...

... is here again and with the holidays (2 weeks off work!) a good opportunity and more importantly NO EXCUSES for not doing some drawing! Here are some festive objects from around the house.

Firstly, a) some little wooden decorations off the tree...

... these are more recent additions to the Christmas tree decoration collection. While said collection has been updated by my mother a little over the years, I'm always glad to see year after year the hobby horses and shiny clip-on red birds. Although the fact that those still remain makes me wonder if anything has actually been culled to make way for the new ones?? Or does the tree just get busier and busier each year?

b) Mmmmmm. Okay so this wasn't exactly 'from around the house', rather taken from a tin put on a plate put in microwave until pop! It cracked. My very own home-made mince pies cooked with love and brought over from Dublin. I managed to last a good few minutes drawing this particular specimen until the smell of sugar, fruit and rum got the better of me and I had to eat it!






Click on the pictures for high-resolution versions!

The National Gallery

I finally made it to the National Gallery today, which I had been planning to visit since arriving in Dublin 6 weeks ago, and also which is only 5 minutes walk from my work! Actually I had been inside the building just to get some information - asked the nice lady on front desk what period the art was from - was told "Well they're all dead now"... and just remembered I'd planned to try and prove her wrong by finding something by a living artist! Ah well, next time. Anyway she's probably right. They seem to be in the middle of a long long refurbishment project so the majority of the works are in storage, but there's still a good collection of both Irish and international art.









 

 

 

Then moved onto some 1 - 3 minute timed sketches in the international wing. Old Caravaggio-type stuff plus a few sculptures.



La la la la last weekend!

Another sketch, another Dublin statue! This guy is hidden away singing his heart out in a corner of the rather lovely Iveagh Gardens in the city centre. World famous, apparently...

I also went along to the Chester Beatty library on Sunday with the Dublin Sketchers drawing group (http://dublinsketchers.blogspot.ie/). The place is a fantastic collection of all sorts of artistic treasures - illustrations, manuscripts, textiles, decorative items... ALL sorts. My personal favourites were a selection of 16th century Middle Eastern drawings with text of New World people, plants, buildings and animals, which the artist had based on some Italian writings... ok I'm not sure if these details are correct, but anyway, the artist had drawn an armadillo as a bird, and a blue anteater... great place to draw, if a little dark (to preserve all the ancient art!). The sketch on the right is taken from a Japanese print of some famous actor of his time. He should be holding a big yellow chair over his head but I ran out of time / space!

The Dead Zoo

Sketches from a visit to the Natural History Museum in Dublin.

New country, new post!

Very very very long time no blogpost... but that will all be changing as I have a whole new city to serve as inspiration - having been relocated to Dublin, Ireland!

One of the first things I did upon arriving was look up drawing classes etc. I found a local sketching group and below are the results from my first outing with them. We met in a big busy cafe in the city centre, famous for its opulent art-nouveau style interior (not going to name and shame but if you've been to Dublin, you've probably been there), less famous for its impatient and unwelcoming staff, trying to move me on while only half-way through my coffee... and I hadn't even got my sketch book out at this stage! Needless to say when I did so, it didn't go down too well with the waiters. Hmm!! So this was all I managed in there...

So I decided to head to nearby St Stephen's Green as no-one would be kicking me out of there, not till sunset anyway (which incidentally is about 21:45 round here!), and found some nice sculptures to sketch. Firstly this bloke, who internet research tells me was a Bengali polymath, and also the only non-Irish person to have a statue on the green.

Secondly this bloke, who is quite famous round these parts.