The Laundry Show

There was a great buzz at the Laundry Show in Dublin last night.
It was great to see so many Irish illustrators and other creatives all in one room.
That's me and my old pal Roger O'Reilly. You can see more photos by Mario Sughi here.
Many thanks to Steve Doogan and the Offset Team for putting together such a great event.

Back to the Drawing Board

It was great to get back drawing portraits at the Arts Club last Friday.
Many thanks to my blogosphere friend Aladine who braved the depths of the Arts Club basement to get us started.
It was great to meet Aladine and her friend John in the flesh.
Here's my twenty five minute sketch of her...I don't think I quite did her justice.

I did another four or five drawings upstairs in the bar and there was mighty craic as the Culture night crowd surveyed the club.
I did another couple of drawings yesterday of one of my favourite models, Giuseppe.



They aren't portraits, but as sketches I think they capture a little of Giuseppe's spiritual nature.

Death and the Maiden

Given a pretty free brief for the IGI Offset event "Laundry" which is on in Dublin next Wednesday, I set about creating an image that reflected many of my own deeper pre-occupations and visual fixations.
Here is the painting that resulted.
I'm not sure what a shrink might make of it.

Culture Night at the United Arts Club in Dublin

I'm one of five or six artists who will be doing fairly quick portrait drawings this Friday as part of the United Arts Club's Dublin Culture Night Celebration!
My pal Brian Gallagher will also be on duty for this Arts Club fundraiser.
We'll be doing doing portrait sketches with each sitting lasting about twenty five minutes. I'll be drawing with wax and chalk on gray Ingres paper, a wee bit like the picture above. I think each drawing will cost the sitter about 20 euro.

Here is the club's blurb about the event:
The historic United Arts Club, founded in 1907 as a centre for people interested in the Arts is opening its doors this Friday night.
Take this opportunity to tour the building and view our current art exhibition (from 5pm-11pm)

Two Life Paintings of Tony

These are two paintings of Tony that I did on the same day.
If I get a decent painting in the morning I tend to leave it and start a new one rather than to risk over-working the first.

Jack and the Beanstalk...Last step: Collapse exhausted!

What a weekend!
The Mountains to Sea Festival was amazing for me in many ways.
It was the first time I've been an artist-in residence anywhere and the experience of working away while hundreds of people went about their business around me was very strange indeed.
I'll make a fuller post about all that went on at the Festival later, but for now I just wanted to show you how the painting turned out.
I chose to illustrate Jack and the Beanstalk in the end, because I thought it might have appeal to the range of age groups who were attending. Plus it is a story I had never illustrated before.
I did all the photo reference and photoshop preparatory work on Friday and sketched the outlines and did some underpainting on Friday night. All of the rest of the work was done at the event in Dun Laoghaire County Hall on Saturday and Sunday....in between events with the children and meeting other illustrators and authors. (I'll tell you more about my meeting with Kate DiCamillo) anon.

Anyway, somehow I got the picture pretty much finished in the three days, and here it is.

Thanks to Conor for the photo and all of his unflagging assistance throughout the weekend.

Jack and the Beanstalk...first step:prime the canvas

As artist-in-residence at the Mountains to Sea Book Festival, I have undertaken to do an illustration over the next two days at the festival. This is the blank canvas for the painting as it is now on Friday afternoon.
I've already done a lot of work on the rough, and I'll scale it up tonight. If all goes well it will end up with a nice big illustration of Jack and the Beanstalk.
I'll hopefully be able to post again on Monday with the results.