Happy Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving to-day.
I have long been fascinated by the Pilgrims and their extraordinary story.
Here’s a picture that I happen to be working on at the moment. I've just started adding the first colour washes.
It shows the moment when a landing party of Pilgrims first set foot on American soil at Cape Cod. They fell to their knees to give thanks to God for bringing them safely across a vast and furious ocean. In fact their worst trials lay ahead of them.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

What "Miss Kate" Did Next

About fifteen years ago when I was looking for an actress/model for a book I was working on, my friend Ann Kavanagh introduced me to a charming young girl named Kate Brennan.
It was no surprise that Kate was already a fine actress, her parents, Martina Stanley and Stephen Brennan, are both very well known on the Irish stage and television.
Kate was perfect for the part. She showed wonderful sensitivity and worked very hard to help me bring Jessie to life.

I have watched Kate's progress through her career as an actress ever since, and was delighted to see that she is now performing as a singer too under the name "Miss Kate", and she's doing so well that she was featured in last week's Sunday Times Culture magazine.

There she is on the cover. It's just great to see Kate doing so well.

A Portrait of Lynda

I'm looking forward to giving two portrait sketch workshops in the next few weeks at Kennedy Art.

Meanwhile here is a portrait of Lynda who recently travelled up from Enniskillen to be painted by me.
Lynda is a lovely person and has just gone back to Art College herself, so we had lots of great chats about painting and drawing techniques.
She is also a terrific model to paint. 

A Portrait Drawing in Charcoal

This shows the progress I made on my demo at my portrait drawing class last night.

The model is someone I have been drawing for many years and she is one of my favourite people to draw or paint.

You can contact Germaine on 087 2142394 for more information about the classes.

Pictiúr Opens at IMMA

These two paintings from The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey are the two of mine that are included in "Pictiúr" which opens at  IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art today! 

A Charcoal Cartoon for Pictiúr

I had a lot of fun doing this sketch for a forthcoming exhibition, Pictiúr at IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
It was so nice to draw something funny for a change and to work so big. The original is about a metre across.
The show is curated by my friend Niamh, Laureate na nÓg, and is organized by CBI with help from the IGI.
The sketch was drawn to be one wall of a reading pod. 
Kids will be able to sit inside with their books. How cool!

Some Early Life Drawings

Here are a few life drawings that I have just come across after many years. They are from the life class at the Art College in Brighton. I was a student there in the early eighties.

I very much enjoyed the facility of a life room being available to me one day each week at college and I was experimenting with several different styles and media including coloured pencils.