Season's Greetings

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year.
Thanks especially to all my regular readers for stopping by the blog.
Here's a sketch of one of my favourite pictures from A Christmas Carol.
If you look very hard, it almost looks as if it's really snowing.

An Old Sketch on an Envelope

This little drawing on the back of an envelope turned up the other day.
It's a portrait of a lovely Welsh guy I used to know, named Dale Evans. We shared college digs for a year when I first went to Brighton Art College.
We were about twenty then.
I think it's a pretty good picture, maybe I should do more drawings on envelopes.

Robert Dunbar's Christmas Book Choice

Robert Dunbar was very kind to me in his round-up of recommended Christmas books.
You can listen to his interview with RTE's Pat Kenny here.
Many thanks Robert.

"What Kate Did Next"

On Saturday night I went to see a wonderful play, called "Terminus" by Mark O'Rowe.
I was invited along by one of the play's stars, a terrific young actress named Kate Brennan.
That's Kate on the right hand side.
She is from a very well-known Irish acting family, and it's great to see her doing so well in the family business.
Kate has developed into a very powerful performer, but she was already impressive twelve years ago, when my friend Ann Kavanagh suggested she would be perfect to model for the central character in the book I was about to start work on.
It was in large part thanks to Kate, and Maya Jussek, who modelled for her grandmother, that "When Jessie Came Across the Sea" worked so well.

The Academic Tradition

We had a full house last night for my talk at the National Print Museum in Dublin.
Many thanks to everyone who braved the cold to come along.
Unfortunately the recording didn't go to plan, so instead, I will chop the talk down, and do it as a formal podcast when I get the chance.
In the lecture I touched a little on the subject of the academic painting tradition, and how it came to be inherited by American illustrators like Howard Pyle and NC Wyeth.
Here's another of my academic studies.
This one is of Mike holding the studio brush.

Illustration: The Cinderella Art-form

"Saturday Evening Post" cover by Norman Rockwell 1922


Here's a reminder of the talk I will be giving to-morrow evening.
I hope to be able to record and podcast it at some future date for anyone who can't get along.

"Illustrator PJ Lynch will give a lecture entitled Illustration: The Cinderella Art-form at The National Print Museum in Dublin, on Thursday 3rd December 2009 at 7.30pm. Admission is free.

He will discuss how in the area of children’s books, authors are generally, and thoughtlessly privileged over illustrators. And how in the visual arts arena, illustration is very often categorized as being at best, a lesser, junior art-form, and, at worst some sort of low brow craft, tainted by commercial motivations. Lynch asks if the boundaries between disciplines are breaking down, and whether contemporary illustrators can rise above the limits imposed by tired old definitions."