PJ's Pilgrims at the Society of Illustrators in New York

I am honoured and delighted that this illustration from The Boy Who Fell Off The Mayflower has been selected by jury for the Original Art 2015 Show at the Society of Illustrators in New York!

My work has been exhibited at the  Society of Illustrators  before and I wish I could be at the launch of this year's event to meet some of my New York based friends and illustrator colleagues, but not this time I'm afraid.

Storm at Sea

Another detail from a painting for that book that will publish next year.
I had a lot of fun doing this storm scene.

Loading the Ship by Lamplight

Here's another detail of one of the illustrations for the book I am just finishing up. 
The ship is being loaded and our hero and friends are on the gangway in the middle distance.

Burial at Sea

Here's a detail showing a burial at sea from the book I am just finishing up now.
I've got a ton of work still to do but I can't believe the end is finally in sight!

"Once upon a time, and a very good time it was too"

I had fun looking through some old work for a painting for a forth-coming group exhibition of Irish picture book artists that will take place in London next month. Looking for something with a particularly Irish flavour I chose my first illustration from The King Of Ireland's Son by Brendan Behan, which I illustrated for Andersen Press back in 1996.

Behan has a wonderfully funny and yet poetic turn of phrase throughout the story.

"Once upon a time, and a very good time it was too, when the streets were paved in penny loaves and the houses were white- washed with buttermilk and the pigs ran round with knives and forks in their snouts shouting, ‘Eat me, eat me!’ there lived a King of Ireland and he had three sons named Art, Neart and Ceart......"

A Sailor in Action

Here's a sailor from the nautically flavoured book I am working on now.
I had a lot of fun playing about with the light effects on this guy.

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! 

Bustling London...... Final State

Here is a scan of the finished painting which I have tweaked a little bit in Photoshop.
This is very much a picture to be looked at up close so that the viewer gets to scan over the various details and incidents.
It will be the first spread in the book and is very much designed to set the scene, to give a sense of the time and the place for the action to come in the rest of the book.

Bustling London....Almost Done

I've pretty much finished this illustration now.
I have scanned the painting and am giving it a final tweak in Photoshop.
Here are the final three shots of the painting process.

Bustling London; Three More Process Pictures

Here are three more pictures showing the progress of my Bustling London illustration.
I've begun adding the characters on the streets and a lot more detail all over.

Bustling London.....Progressing

I'm really enjoying working up my painting of 17th Century London.
Although I did a very detailed drawing for this piece I have been changing elements and adding details as I paint.
Emmersing myself in the life of this late medieval market I find I naturally come up with details or incidents that I hadn't thought of at the drawing stage.
This process is great for my confidence in my technique, especially as I haven't painted in watercolour for a few months.
I had intended that the foreground houses would be all darker in order to show that they were closer to the viewer than the main action, but as I was painting it in, it struck me that I could vary the tone from darkest to lightest to imply that a cloud was passing overhead.

Please note that some of the photos are a bit darker and more contrasty than others depending on the time of day they are shot.

Bustling London Watercolour

I posted a sketch of Bustling London a little while ago.
It's the first scene from the book I am working on.
Here are a few photos showing how the colour painting of that piece is developing.

I'll post some more as I get on with it.

Happy St George's Day

Happy St George's Day.
I haven't ever illustrated that saint's story but this has similarities.
It's video of me doing an illustration showing the Bee-man of Orn tackling a pretty scary dragon.

The Light Machine

Here's another early piece from my portfolio that I have always been very fond of. 
This one is called "The Light Machine".
As in the previous post the technique involved painting in watercolour over a pretty detailed ink line drawing.

Tall Tales

I'm roughing out some long vertical illustrations for the book I am working on at the moment and that made me think of other long pictures I have done over the years.

It was Walker Books' wonderful art director, Amelia Edwards, who first gave me these long window shaped spaces to fill in a book called Melisande by E Nesbit (above), and I still really love doing them.

From The Sainsbury's Book of Fairy Tales by Sarah Hayes

From East o' The Sun, West o' The Moon

From The Names Upon The Harp  by Marie Heaney

Ignis in Germany

Here are three of my illustrations from Ignis by Gina Wilson, which are among a bunch that are winging their way to Cologne in Germany for an exhibition.
I'll post a few more next week with more info about the show and venue.

"Two Centuries After"

If you are in Bologna this week at the international Book Fair, you might consider visiting the Dickens exhibition, "Two Centuries After", at the beautiful Palazzo Saraceni in the center of the city.
The exhibition is organized by Cooperativa Culturale Giannino Stoppani for BolognaFiere.
I have five pictures in the group show, including a few of the grimmer pictures from A Christmas Carol that I haven't exhibited before.

Watercolour of Dora

I rarely paint watercolours from life apart from the occasional still life, so it was unusual for me to tackle the subject of Dora, a neighbour's cat.
She was having a snooze in our garden and I got five or ten minutes before she moved.
It was nice to do something so quick and loose.

A First Try-Out for Melisande

I've had cause recently to go through my archive of original illustrations.
That word "archive" makes it sound a lot more neatly organized than it actually is I'm afraid.
I came across this painting which was my first effort at illustrating Melisande.
It appears that I was setting the book back in medieval times, but I am glad that when I really got into the process I updated the costumes a bit.
I still like this one though, and I am surprised that the composition didn't get used in the book somewhere.

The King of Ireland's Son in the United Arts Club

Many thanks to Laureate na nÓg, Siobhán Parkinson who gave a wonderful speech at last night's launch of the IGI exhibition at the United Arts Club.
And hats off again to Brian Gallagher for putting the whole show together.

This illustration from The King of Ireland's Son by Brendan Behan is one of the two paintings that I have in the exhibition.
It's nice to have a picture from this book in the show, as Behan spent quite a bit of time in the bar of the United Arts Club himself.