Sketch Therapist

This week I share lots of tips, including my choice of ten colours if for some reason you weren’t allowed any more! Meanwhile, I sketch some lovely autumn leaves. Also: you could do worse than throw your hand into the ring and join Inktober with the two weeks left of this month. Thank you Janelle Shane for your AI-generated list of prompts…it’s so much fun!

This week I share some really top tips on sketching in a café - including capturing those hard-working waitresses - and how to capture the life and magic of an on-location sketch in a final piece, especially for a commission. It’s also the one where I tell you I’m packing in my fledging college-going life due to a small matter of thoroughly underestimating my time. A bit naïve but sometimes you only know when you try…

This week, sketching fish in Galway City dredges up memories of a misspent youth; we nearly lose our little dog Reuben; and the students make stunning sketches of the bounty of autumn…oh and I wax lyrical about young men in gyms!

This week, I talk about sketching with my son Paddy, my newest sketching buddy. I share his tale of disappointment leading to violence after missing out on Guinness and oysters - who could blame him?

I’ve had a crazy week of sketching, in which a day didn’t go by without my pens and watercolours coming out for a sketch. Some of it was for work, some for fun, but all of it was a pleasure…especially the sketches when I was joined by my lovely son Paddy. I also describe how I sketch a non-supermarket apple, fresh from my orchard.

In today’s episode I tell you how I made some ink and feather quills for drawing, and took them to the 10th USk Symposium in Amsterdam. And if you don’t have the wherewithal to make ink from oak apples, I share my favourite commercial ink brands and colours with you.

This week, I return to the familiar theme of bringing stamina to the long road that is an artist’s life. It’s my turn to show stamina as I’ve joined a gym and engaged a personal trainer. Meanwhile I receive some very good news, as I discover the presence of barn owls in Tyrone House a few fields from my house in Galway. This means I may yet be rid of the rodents in my studio roof!

I meet lots of sketchers: some are brimming with confidence, others are terrified, and there’s often very little relationship between the level they’re at and their level of confidence. In this episode I suggest ways to beat that fear - to give yourself a good talking-to - and while you’re doing that, to sketch your coffee cup. Also: kids’ art class coming up on Saturday afternoons Irish time, with a theme of Irish Wildlife. Keep an eye on the website roisincure.com.

Concentrating on watercolour-first in this week’s episode: Galway City Distillery with its shiny copper stills and vats is an urban sketcher’s paradise. I demonstrated capturing reflections in their working gin lab, and again at the water’s edge, sketching the stunning traditional Irish west coast boat, the Galway Hooker. They were in town for the annual race across Galway Bay. Proud of my city this weekend.

I’ve become an illustrator for the Barn Owl Project and in this episode I share a few things about these lovely creatures that you probably knew already. I record the entire episode during a thunderstorm, and I hope my terror doesn’t come through in the recording!