Culture Night at the United Art Club

Young Sam Lynch will be playing piano while Brian Gallagher and PJ Lynch  are drawing portraits on Culture Night at the United Arts Club in Dublin!

Sam has just learned "Naval" by Yann Tiersen for the occasion.

I hope lots of you can come along for Sam's first gig.

Once Upon A Place at the Electric Picnic

We had a brilliant weekend hanging out with some of Ireland's best writers at the Electric Picnic music and Arts Festival.

The focus for us was Once Upon A Place, a wonderful book of short stories and poems with illustrations by me. The project was initiated by Laureate Na nÓg, Eoin Colfer to help to reacquaint Irish children with the beauty and magic of our country.

The book is published by Little Island and comes out in October
 Enda Wyley was there reading her own poem from the book, and talking about the other poets featured therein. She's not only an amazing writer but a great reader as well. 

I did some live drawing on Saturday wilst Eoin chatted with author/publisher Siobhán Parkinson, poet Enda Wyley and our expert compere, (give that woman a chatshow) Patricia Forde.

Next day another starry group including  Roddy Doyle, Sarah Webb , Oisín McGann and Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick read  extracts from their stories. 

Click here see what Marie-Louise and husband Michael Emberley got up to at the Electric Picnic.

Many thanks are due to Children's Books Ireland, and Little Island for alltheir work on this project and for making the inaugural Electric Picnic children's literature event such a great success.

Four Day Drawing and Painting Workshop in Belfast

It has been a long summer hasn’t it?
If you are itching to get stuck into some serious drawing and painting come and join Julie Douglas and me for our four day drawing and oil painting workshop in Belfast.
Friday 28th - Monday 31st August

We will be working together to provide you with a rounded learning experience, which will include using charcoal, pencil and oils. Each day is structured, with achievable goals, pushing your skills and confidence up.
The course will include colour mixing, portrait painting and life drawing, with demonstrations each day.

The cost is £425 which includes refreshments and lunch. Students will bring their own materials and a list will be provided nearer the time.
I am really looking forward to it.
Working with Julie is always great fun, and we will also get through a lot of great work!
For details and booking please email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk

PJ at the University of Ulster Festival of Art and Design in Belfast

Next Wednesday the 11th of March I will be doing a talk and a demo at the University of Ulster Festival of Art and Design in Belfast.
Many thanks to my pal Julie Douglas for asking me to take part.
I hope to see some of you there.
http://www.ulsterfestival.com/pj-lynch.html

The blurb says "PJ Lynch is an award-winning illustrator. He is a passionate advocate of good drawing in all its forms, and in this session he will discuss what drawing means to him with reference to his work as an artist and illustrator. During the session he will paint a portrait in oils."

Wishing You All A Very Happy And Prosperous 2015

And a very Happy New Year to you all.
This is a drawing i did quite a while ago as you might see, back when I was using pen and ink and when I was much influenced by great American illustrators like Rockwell and Leyendecker.

A Profile Study of Alicja

I got a chance to do this little study of Alicja while I was teaching a lovely group of artists at the RHA yesterday. 

Alicja is a beautiful girl, but it is difficult to catch a likeness of her because she has such strong features. I was pretty pleased with this effort though.

My class did really well working in charcoal and emphasising tone over line. I'll get some shots of the group next week.

Painting in Normandy

Here is a slideshow showing a selection of images from a wonderful week of drawing and painting at a gorgeous location in France. 

My Version of Mr Hyde

Having done a triangular image  one metre across for Pictiúr recently, I've been inspired to draw some more  big charcoal pictures.

Here's one that is on-going.

It's a slightly comic version of Mr Hyde from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson.

I'd like to get on and finish it but the original is ten foot long and it's a job to unravel it and to get to work on the bloomin' thing.

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.

The RHA Drawing Marathon

I'm looking forward to facilitating at the RHA Drawing Marathon tomorrow.

Molly will be one of the models.
Here is a drawing I did of her last week at Brian's life session at the United Arts Club.

Snow Storm at Sea

You might remember I posted one of my first drawings for the book I am working on now.
It's very early days and I don't want to say too much about the subject of the book but I will post bits and pieces as I progress through the project.
Here it is again, and below is the finished painting.

Some Ink Line Illustrations

I rarely get the chance to do ink line work these days.
These are a few from quite obscure books of long ago that I found when I was hunting through some old folders.

Storm at Sea

Here's another sketch from the book I am working on now. The one I have written myself.
I don't want to say too much about the story but I will be posting more of the pictures as I proceed.
This one is a pencil drawing with some Photoshop effects added.

Medieval Street Setting

I've been enjoying inventing some nice old architectural settings for the book that I am working on at the moment.
The tones are added later in Photoshop.

Ten Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci

I hadn't bothered going to see the exhibition of ten drawings by Leonardo that is currently showing at the Ulster Museum.

I thought that they might be a selection of his less wonderful drawings, and maybe I thought it wasn't worth bothering over just ten pictures.

Anyway, I went yesterday when we were up in Belfast and had the kids over to see a Dinosaur exhibition that was also on at the Museum.

I was so thrilled to find that this extraordinary sketch of a man on a rearing horse is one of the ten drawings in the show.

For me, it was worth going just to see this picture.

This sketch was in a fantastic book about Leonardo that I had out on almost permanent loan from my school's library, and it always stood out for me as one of Leonardo's most sublime creations.

I stood and looked at this little drawing for a very long and happy moment.

So if you are in or near Belfast do go and visit the exhibition. It's on until the 27th of August.

The rest of the Museum is wonderful too.

The National Library of Ireland's Prints and Drawings Collection

Someone contacted me recently about a picture that they had seen in the National Library of Ireland's Prints and Drawings Collection.
Under the directorship of the wonderful Dr Pat Donlon, the NLI acquired a large collection of my original work, which they have added to over the years. Pat was very keen to get hold of preliminary drawings and unused paintings from right at the start of my career.
The ink line drawing pictured here is from "WB Yeats: Fairy Tales of Ireland".

Culture Night in Dublin

For Culture Night in Dublin this Friday, I will again be drawing portraits at the United Arts Club.
I'll be there from 7.30pm and the drawings are only 10 euro each.
Here’s one I did last year of the artist, Patrick Brocklebank.

Issa

I was particularly pleased with this drawing for the main character, Issa, in the new book I am illustrating, as I made it without reference, and I think it is pretty convincing in the figure's anatomy and emotion.
I made a half-hearted effort to get models for this book, but I really wanted to do another book, like A Christmas Carol, that is drawn primarily from the imagination.

A Lot of Heads at the RHA Summer Fête

I had a great time drawing all afternoon at the RHA Summer Fete.
Una, Emily and I were joined on the day by another of the Thursday life artists, Dorothy Smith.
Most of our models were children, who sat very still for the fifteen or twenty minutes we needed, and we all managed to get some nice work done. Emily even did a lovely portrait of one of my own kids.
Although my young sitters were great, I was still very happy to get to draw a few adults too.
Angel (above), the Arts Convenor from the UAC, was just lovely to draw, and I was delighted to meet Eoghan Kerrigan (below), a young artist who I'm sure will have a great career in illustration or character design ahead of him.


Many thanks to Bernadette for her great photos of the day.

The RHA Summer Fête.

I did a couple of quick portrait heads of our models at the life session yesterday.
This one shows Amanda, who had white dreadlocks when we met her last.
It was good practice for tomorrow when I will be drawing portraits at the RHA Summer Fête..
Thursday buddies Una Sealy ARHA and Emily Scott will also be on portrait-drawing duty.
It looks like it should be a fun event. Here's the blurb;

"Planning what to do this weekend? Don't worry about the weather and come and join us for our Summer Fête. (all indoors) this Saturday 18th, 3 - 7pm. A family fun day with music, face painting, childrens workshop, RHA cake stand and much more. Just €10 for adults & children go free. Please come along and support our Summer fundraiser."