Drawing Galway 005 - The Canal Walk (behind Born in Galway)

Jay picked us a fantastic locale for our session of drawing Galway this week, and we got lucky with the weather! The Galway International Arts Festival 2014 is on, so the city is full of Art and life at the moment, putting us all in the mood for getting out and about and doing a bit of Urban Sketching. It also a makes the city full of distractions, and as it's also the month where plenty of people go on their holidays, so it was a smaller gathering than last time!

Galway is full of canals, and we have walks alongside most of them. They make great spots to sit in the Sun and have lunch, or better yet to sit and draw! Every angle from where we sat, you could see picturesque, interesting scenery all about. The only downside to where we were is that the foliage is in full bloom at the moment, so it was only glimpses of the Cathedral, the Arts Festival tent, St Nicholas's Church etc that we captured. Everything else was trees and flowers!

Daniel hard at work -


Jay waving while Roisin, Brianan, Harry, Laura & Marian keep painting like proper Urban Sketchers!


Harry's work -


Laura's work -


Jay's painting -




Roisin & Brianan - the weather was lovely in Galway today!


Roisin's work -




Brianan's work -


Angeline & Patricia painting in the sunshine -


They were doing lovely quick sketches in watercolour, here's both of Angeline's




and my sketch of the day -


Loads of fun! Come join us on the 24th of August for Drawing Galway 006 - Mutton Island/Grattan Road

Drawing Galway 004 - Quay Street, Galway

We had a fantastic day for our group meet-up. Galway has been sweltering under the influence of our annual week of Summery weather, so we knew it would be warm. Luckily, the temperature dipped down to pleasant but not melting for Sunday, so we proceeded out to Quay Street for our meet-up.

We were mentioned in the Galway Advertiser in the previous month and Roisin delivered an excellent talk in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, so we knew public interest was piqued, but I think the turn out was beyond our expectations! Jay arrived early and picked an excellent spot under the shade of some small trees just down from the Spanish Arch and we settled in for our drawing day.

You can spot any collection of Urban Sketchers by the folding stools!


In fact, I found several new people by spotting them wandering about with folding stools on their backs! We also got a wonderful reaction from passers-by, everyone was very friendly, with locals, children, tourists and Artists alike all enquiring what were we doing? Are we a group? Is it a class? I have a feeling more people will turn up to join us next time.

Look at everyone, busily sketching away.


Angeline Cooke


Caitriona Ryan


Ruth Campion


Scott Sibbald


Patricia Hehir


Nora Shaughnessy


Roisin Cure


Patricia Kavanagh


Ruth McHugh


Kerry MacLure


Josephine Boland


Jay Penn


Donal Fallon


Philip Barrett


What a great crew on a great day!


Keep an eye on our Facebook Group for more updates, and come join us on the canal walk, Newtownsmith, Galway (behind Born) on July 20th for Drawing Galway 005!

Lorna McMahon's Garden: An Oasis of Serenity in Galway City

In early summer every year, you can leave Galway City and head west for a few minutes, and find yourself in heaven. Lorna McMahon opens her garden, Ard Carraig, to the public for three consecutive Sundays each May to support Mental Health Ireland. Lorna pots up literally thousands of plants to sell at the open days, and it raises lots of badly-needed funds for the organisation. But at 75, she's beginning to find the work involved in that a bit much, and next year will be the last year that she opens Ard Carraig to the public.

I first visited Lorna's garden about sixteen years ago. That time, I was on my own, and tears came to my eyes as I walked through the woodland area. Dappled sunlight filtered through birches, making bluebells, wild garlic and ferns glow in the greenish gloom, and I was transported to another woodland on the side of a mountain in Co. Wicklow, where I grew up.

Two years later, I carried my baby on my back through Lorna's garden, and later again, my toddlers hopped over the rocks and played in the streams that twist and turn through the garden. And then a few weeks ago, my eldest - the baby in the back carrier - had to be bribed to come with us, and sulked from start to finish, but I saw her running her hand over the bark of a silver birch, and feeling the fronds of a fern through her fingers.

"Lorna must have lots of help with the garden," said my husband, as we walked through five acres of immaculate, weed-free beauty.

"No, she does it all on her own," I answered. "In fact if her family want to contact her, they have to write or call in - she rarely hears the phone."

The day we visited, I asked Lorna if I could come back and paint in the garden: I thought between us, we might be able to do something with the paintings, to raise money for the charity she supports. She was delighted.

"Thirty years ago, I held a dance to raise money for Mental Health Ireland," she said. "People didn't want to buy tickets. If they did, they did so anonymously, because they didn't want to be associated with the stigma of mental health issues. It's much better now, but it's still there."

I told her that I had had my troubles in the past, and that I wanted to play my part to help, if I could.

This is the herb garden. "It used to be a tennis court," Lorna told me. "but none of the children played anymore. So I made these raised beds, and when I had to move a bed for some reason a while back, the white lines were still visible. It could all be moved away again in three days, if necessary."

I marvelled at the variety of herbs I saw.

"There's a section of herbs that appear in Shakespeare, and another with herbs that appear in the Bible...but on the whole, the herbs have been chosen for their medicinal, ornamental or culinary value."

Then I was left on my own to draw. Suddenly I heard a terrible squeaking, as if a rat was being attacked by a flock (a murder?) of crows. Any sketcher will tell you that nothing short of an apocalypse will get you to move, but I had to see what the noise was about. A huge frog squatted near the hedge on the right. I wondered if it had been injured, so I poked it lightly with the edge of my paper. It squeaked loudly and hopped away...so now I know that frogs squeak.

This drawing is from the primula and azalea garden, chosen because they were at their best when I was there a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, I didn't do the beautiful primulas justice, which are more like a troupe of pretty ballerinas that the measly stalks I produced. But I have an idea up my sleeve that will fix that when the time comes.

There are also lots of luscious hostas alongside the primulas, and as they aren't in any way fiddly to draw, I have no excuse. I'd love to go back and do them again.

Lorna has made all these little private areas within the garden, each with its own focal point, like the Japanese temple (if that's what it is) in this sketch. It was heaven to draw - all those strong, simple shapes - but I can't say the same for the blossoms everywhere. Ah well, it's all a learning curve and it'll be fun getting there, and I'll have plenty of opportunities over the year as I return to paint the garden some more.

As usual, time went far too fast. In stark contrast to the crowds that were there on the Open Days, I had the entire place to myself, with nothing but the sounds of very relaxed birds singing around me, and no more alarming squeaks. I had plenty of time to reflect on the great good fortune that was the discovery of sketching, how it's been therapeutic beyond words for me...and how I might be able to help others in some way through this practice.

Tip: Lorna's hostas were magnificent, and didn't have a single slug bite. Lorna says if you go out on a nice day in January and kill the slugs, before they get a chance to breed, you won't be troubled by them for the rest of the year.

Next year in paradise? A stretch of sand in Mauritius

Mauritius is a tiny dot of land on the vast expanse of blue that is the Indian Ocean. Travel south, and you hit Antarctica: east, and it's Perth; west, and you'll hit Madagascar; north it's Oman. But each of these places is a very long way away, and you really do feel isolated from the world in Mauritius. I don't know if it's because of this, but there is a magical, Dr. Seuss feeling to the island: the people don't exactly look like characters in his books, not being particularly fluffy, but they are multi-coloured, with origins in China, India, Europe and Africa; and the landscape most definitely looks like a Dr. Seussian one, with bobbles teetering on top of mountains, and adorable bottle palms and the like that are straight from the pages of his books. And to me, from the very start, Mauritius was most definitely Sola-Sollew. To me, it's paradise.

There's a small beach on the north coast in a village called Trou-aux-Biches. I had the great fortune to spend six months living there. Early one morning, I took my cup of tea and my drawing kit to the beach and painted what I saw. The coconut trees behind me threw shadows onto the white sand and boats bobbed in the turquoise water, waiting for young Mauritian guys in mirrored sunglasses to take the helm and churn up the tranquility of the lagoon, tourists on board, or venture past the reef and chase dolphins messing about in deeper water. In my drawing, a man walks purposefully from left to right: he has just greeted the man walking in the opposite direction, with the tiny child beside him. She was an adorable girl of about six, who was skipping happily through the shallows, her perfectly-coiffed, jet-black plaits bouncing behind her. As the two men met, they greeted each other warmly; two native Mauritians, with the beach still to themselves before the hordes descended, apart from the tourist with the paints.

This sketch is what I see when I turn through 180 degrees: these are the coconut palms throwing the shadows onto the sand that you see above. When my husband first visited Mauritius, he was just seven years old, and the trees were tiny. Everything grows fast here: cyclones periodically raze most vegetation to the ground, but it never stops creeping back. For over fifty years, my husband's aunt and her family lived in the house on the right, and my family and I stayed in the apartment on the left. The white picket fence is ten yards from the orange awning; hop over it and you're on the sand, literally a stone's throw from the lagoon. All day long people walk up and down the beach - samosa sellers, hawkers, tourists, and there's never a dull moment - not until the sun starts to set and peace descends. This is what my auntie-in-law looked out upon. Every day. For fifty years. My auntie-in-law and her daughter told me of the time they endured a cyclone, and the sea was trying to carry off their house. "You remember Bou bou, the dog," they said. "Yes!" said my husband. "Of course I remember him! We named our first dog after him - I loved Bou Bou! I used to make him dive for stones." "Well, said, my auntie-in-law, "he was in danger of being washed away by the storm. He was in the doorway - here - with all four paws clinging for dear life to the frame of the door, barely visible through the surf. We were clutching his fur, trying not to lose our grip..." Happily, Bou Bou lived to see another day.

This was drawn a little later in the day, with my back to the two houses, after people had had lunch and were generally lazing about. It was mid-winter, which in Mauritius means you will probably get sunburned, but you may also be rained upon for a minute or two. I enjoyed drawing the tourists as they alternately frolicked in the lagoon and frantically packed up their towels. You can see the cloud threatening overhead, but I'm Irish, and I know what clouds are going to do next, so I bided my time. You can see a bright yellow craft full of day-trippers. These boats drag along huge inflatable rings they call "bouées". I'm sure I haven't spelled that right. The driver of the craft straps tiny kiddies onto these "buoys" and off they go...tearing up the reef. The kids love it, but the boats make an almighty racket and disturb the peace something terrible. I would wish them all well, but every year there is less sea-life to be seen in the water of the lagoon; soon it will be the sterile basin that you can see in other parts of the island. On my honeymoon fifteen years ago, there was so much life under the water just next to the shore that I was terrified and kept having to catch my breath. Two years ago, it was still scary: I finally solved this problem by sending my husband ahead of me, so that he would meet the shark first (there aren't any in the lagoon, but you never know). Last year, it just wasn't scary. Actually, it was worse, but in a ghost-town sort of way. Very sad.

I always thought living on the beach would be nice, but I had no idea just how blissful it would be. One has one's dreams: someday we hope to live there, but I don't think we'll get fifty years out of it. We'd make do with whatever we get.

Drawing Galway 003 - The Prom, Salthill

Sketch-Out in Sunny Salthill, 18th May 2014

I was looking forward to this first Urban Sketchers Galway sketch-out all month. The week started off with Galway looking like a dreamland, in a way that a sunny May in rural Ireland can be. All week, I had spent days and evenings drawing; Monday in a copse down a country road with bumble bees around me and birds singing their hearts out; Tuesday looking over the bay at Killeenaran with seagulls letting the breeze carry them; Thursday in Gort, in a sunny town square, chatting to locals, and on Friday, hidden in the bushes like a paparazzo, sitting deep in a flowerbed, painting a client's house. Bliss. I tweeted that if Sunday was half as nice as any of those days, we were in for a treat.

But that tweet was a lie...sort of. I knew that the weather was going to be rotten, as it was promised windy and rainy.  I was so disappointed as I had tried to spread the word about our sketch-out as much as I could, and Donal and a friend of his had made some super flyers which they'd passed around Galway. 

Now it looked like it would be a wash out.

Miracles do happen, though...the weather guys were WRONG! The sun shone for us and made our day a roaring success.

So let me introduce the crew: Phil is the chap in the green jacket. He's just moved down to Galway. He's going to love it here. And that's Casey sitting beside him. Casey is from Melbourne but she's been in Galway for a while. Jay is taking the photo so you can't see him, but he's from Melbourne too, and he's also made Galway his home. Casey tried to tell him that swimming in the sea here is fantastic, but he wasn't buying it. That's me in the day-glo hat...I'm so used to wearing a million layers when I'm out sketching that I can't quite take off the hat yet, even though it was really warm. I'm from Co. Wicklow and I've lived in Galway since 1991, and I have swum in the sea here. Jay, you're outnumbered. Swim with the tide man...! (in a wetsuit, perhaps...)

Here we see Patrick on the left with Ruth beside him. Ruth, like me, is a geologist who loves to draw. The seventh sketcher was Carmel but she managed to avoid the camera!

You can see the Burren in Co. Clare across the bay. If you've seen The Shire in seen the Lord of the Rings movies, then you have a fair idea of the countryside around there...apparently Tolkein spent time in the Burren before he wrote his books and some of the names of his characters were inspired by old Irish names from the area. 

But back to Sunday. That gent in the navy jacket that you can see in the background is Walking The Prom. This is a Galway tradition and every day you will see what appears to be half the city marching up and down along the prom, which is 2km long. It runs from the heart of Galway City all the way out to the very edge of the city, just before Barna. You can see Galway Bay strecthing out beside you and there is a sandy beach the entire length of the Prom which is full of people enjoying the sand and the beautiful Atlantic Ocean from the inside. Women storm up and down the Prom in groups, arms swinging, sunglasses on. They kick the wall at the end in case they think they may not have "done" the whole Prom. The first time I saw that I thought it was a set up, but it's just Galway women doing their thing. Even though I scoffed, there's no point fighting it - I kicked it too in the end. 

There's a diving board at the end, just next to the wall that the ladies kick, where the half of Galway that isn't walking up and down is jumping off. Here's a drawing of it that I did last year. Not part of Sunday's sketch-out but a quintessential part of Salthill nonetheless. (If you're around on Christmas Day, join the crazy dudes in Santa hats who swim there for charity...)

 Here's Phil's sketch of people enjoying the Prom. That kid hopping on the rocks is so typical...

Kids learn to ride their bikes up and down the prom, weaving in and out of indulgent citizens.  My kids learned to rollerblade on the Prom. And there's always somewhere to buy them a 99 (a whipped ice cream with a chocolate Flake sticking out of the top) if you need to bribe, I mean treat, them for any reason. Ruth caught a lucky child enjoying a 99 on Sunday...

And when it's not ice-cream weather, and especially if you're annoyed about something, there is nothing like wrapping up well, grabbing your house keys and pounding up and down in the wild Atlantic wind and rain that is much of the winter here. It's a great place to walk the dog, unless you have a huge boxer who won't stop pulling, no matter what training techniques you employ. The dog in Ruth's picture looks quite well-behaved. Then again, everyone else's always do...

Here's another sketch by Phil, with a nice sketch of Seapoint, where there is an amusements (and I think apartments above). I like that pregnant lady.

And more walkers -

In this pic you can see the road leading up through Salthill. The street is called Upper Salthill. Descriptive. It is full of amusement arcades, ice cream parlours, pizzerias, chippers and shops where you can buy giant inflatable dolphins in case you've had an urge to visit the beach and have forgotten your giant inflatable dolphin.  

Jay was great with the photos - thanks man! Here's Ruth's drawing of him...with me in my day-glo hat.

And here is Jay's drawing of Upper Salthill - what a beautiful sky.

And here's mine - that small slug-like thing in the foreground is in fact a very brave baby who has crawled away from mummy to visit the nice ladies beside the bike on the grass - see her watching him? He's wearing an adorable tartan hat but I had already filled in the grass before I drew him so it was a bit late to draw it...

It's a panoramic view, drawn over two pages, so I can't fit in it...here's (most) of the rest of it, with Galway Bay just visible on the right.

So here's to many more - if you can join us next time, we'd love to see you. Anyone at all! Visitors to the city, you're welcome! Galwgians and non-Galwegians alike, come on down. We are planning to celebrate our new Urban Sketchers Galway status with a cup of tea...Phil thinks we should smash it off a boat...Now THAT would be something to draw!!

Looking forward to meeting you!

Music to my Ears

Music to my Ears 

Saturday night and you're driving along country roads lined with hedgrows on steroids - they're basically Godzillas of hedges and wild flowers, exploding with life. Everything is intense green. In the dusk you see a most unprepossessing building with a green door. It's Ballinderreen Community Centre, in deepest South Galway, home of movie screenings of hurling matches, zumba and pilates classes, visits from Santy in December and Easter egg hunts in April.

But last Saturday it held a most unusual trio. They are three of the most amazing musicians I've heard, and were joined by a special guest with a voice of honey. The musicians were Mick Daly on banjo and vocals, Jim Rooney on guitar and vocals and Arty McGlynn on guitar and vocals. The special guest was Seán Keane, and anyone who has heard him sing the May Morning Dew knows what it means to come from rural Ireland.
Jim Rooney has lived music all his life, and is a folk singer in the vein of Hank Williams, Pete Seeger and others, and has produced Nanci Griffiths and many more; Mick Daly sings so beautifully, plays banjo like he was born to it and has been a fixture on the traditional Irish music scene for forty years, and Arty McGlynn, traditional Irish music royalty, plays sweet and gentle and makes your heart stir with passion with his guitar when it resonates so deeply.

Jim and his wife Carol have spent the best part of twenty summers here in Killeenaran, but have recently returned to live in the States permanently. He's just published his memoir, In It For The Long Run, and he was launching it before the concert on Saturday night.

Early last Tuesday morning, five days before the concert, there was a knock at my door. It was Mattie Larkin, a neighbour of Jim's in Killeenaran.

"Would you paint something for Jim Rooney?" asked Mattie. "We want to make a presentation to him on Saturday night at the concert. I know it's short notice..."

"I'd be delighted to," I said. "I've just finished a job, I'm gasping to get out of here and it's a beautiful day."

I run an illustrated wedding invitation business, and by that Tuesday morning I had been sticking invitations together for 72 hours, taking breaks only to eat, sleep and do things mothers have to do with kids at weekends. The floor of my studio was littered with the leavings of 180 invitations' worth of double-sided sticky tape, most of which seemed to have missed the bin.  My fingers were sore from folding and tacky from glue and I had just packed up the last invitation when Mattie arrived.

We knew just what to paint - Jim must have walked along the road that leads to Killeenaran Pier about a million times. I spent the next few hours in wind and sun painting the beautiful bay at the top of the road leading down to the pier. I'm getting more splashy and less particular as a watercolourist, thanks to the years of urban sketching, because you're frequently under pressure to fire off a drawing in ten or fifteen minutes.

It's a long, thin panoramic painting but here's the far left-hand side of it:




Part of the deal was a pair of tickets to the concert, which I had been planning on going to anyway. Besides, I am completely addicted to sitting out with my paints with nothing but the sky for a ceiling, so I couldn't have been happier.

My friend Andrea Lippert lives quite close to me down another beautiful country road, and she makes beautiful frames, so I was thrilled when she reckoned she could just about squeeze in a frame for the painting before Saturday.

The concert opened up with a group of local musicians, Sue Fahy on fiddle, Ellen and Mary Wiseman on guitar and vocals and Fintan O'Malley on percussion.
Ellen sang All Of Me and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

Here are Sue and Mary - I didn't get the others in, which is a pity!

Now, I've drawn in lots of places. I'm not shy, and I stopped feeling self-conscious about drawing in public years ago. But for some reason I was self-conscious as I drew these ladies. It may have been the fact that I was in the front row, just a few feet in front of them, or perhaps because I wasn't sure whether they knew I'd be drawing them, or maybe because I was the only one drawing in a room full of people sitting in rows behind and to either side of me.
But my husband said to me quietly that I'd better get used to overcoming that...so I just drew.

After these lovely musicians entertained us for a while, Jim, Mick and Arty took the stage. I don't know how often they play such a small venue - the Community Centre can't possibly hold more than about a hundred. The music began and i was swept away, but I kept my wits about me long enough to draw them. Does anyone have any tips for drawing hands changing chords really fast?

I drew carefully, in pencil, and that's the drawing at the top of the page. It's a good way to draw if you're keen to catch a good likeness because you can fix mistakes, but it's not really my medium of choice these days.

I'm a BOLD STROKES type person and I love to use a pen, with a devil-may-care attitude to mistakes.
So here's my second drawing of the guys -

I have to admit I prefer this one...you just can't beat a brush pen with a Platinum Carbon pen for a bit of cross-hatching.

I had been longing to draw musicians for ages and I wasn't disappointed. I would love more gigs along these lines, it's a lovely way to be present.

Four and a half hours after my husband and I arrived in the Community Centre in Ballinderreen, we were sorry to have to leave, full of tea and scones and the warmth of sharing music with our lovely neighbours. The weather had broken and it was pouring rain. I stood in the doorway with another lady whose husband, like mine, had gone to get the car. We smiled at each other, obviously both feeling a bit guilty.

"Sure that's what husbands are for," she said.

Afterwards, I thought about Jim, who became very emotional during the concert as he reflected on his long and happy life of love and music. "I've been so very blessed," he said.

And I thought about painting in the sun and wind, and surrounded by beautiful music, and I thought how blessed I am too.