Sketch Therapist

A short episode this week - I think I need to catch my breath! But short can be sweet and this week it’s all about capturing those in-the-way folk who come into your frame of view JUST as you’re drawing something…here’s a way around that!

This week I explain how to capture light in glass, I evangelise once more about fully experiencing the seasons through sketching - and I tell you about my idea for an upcoming podcast subject!

This week is all about ink: how to use it as a scribbly sketcher and how to use it when you’re coming up with cartoons. I try as best I can to explain how I come up with, and draw, the cartoons I’ve been doing for Inktober, but only you can tell me if I’ve got anywhere. Of everything I do, cartoons are a window into my brain, and I don’t have eyes on the back of my head so I can barely see in myse...

This week I share lots of tips, including my choice of ten colours if for some reason you weren’t allowed any more! Meanwhile, I sketch some lovely autumn leaves. Also: you could do worse than throw your hand into the ring and join Inktober with the two weeks left of this month. Thank you Janelle Shane for your AI-generated list of prompts…it’s so much fun!

This week I share some really top tips on sketching in a café - including capturing those hard-working waitresses - and how to capture the life and magic of an on-location sketch in a final piece, especially for a commission. It’s also the one where I tell you I’m packing in my fledging college-going life due to a small matter of thoroughly underestimating my time. A bit naïve but sometimes you on...

This week, sketching fish in Galway City dredges up memories of a misspent youth; we nearly lose our little dog Reuben; and the students make stunning sketches of the bounty of autumn…oh and I wax lyrical about young men in gyms!

This week, I talk about sketching with my son Paddy, my newest sketching buddy. I share his tale of disappointment leading to violence after missing out on Guinness and oysters - who could blame him?

I’ve had a crazy week of sketching, in which a day didn’t go by without my pens and watercolours coming out for a sketch. Some of it was for work, some for fun, but all of it was a pleasure…especially the sketches when I was joined by my lovely son Paddy. I also describe how I sketch a non-supermarket apple, fresh from my orchard.

In today’s episode I tell you how I made some ink and feather quills for drawing, and took them to the 10th USk Symposium in Amsterdam. And if you don’t have the wherewithal to make ink from oak apples, I share my favourite commercial ink brands and colours with you.

This week, I return to the familiar theme of bringing stamina to the long road that is an artist’s life. It’s my turn to show stamina as I’ve joined a gym and engaged a personal trainer. Meanwhile I receive some very good news, as I discover the presence of barn owls in Tyrone House a few fields from my house in Galway. This means I may yet be rid of the rodents in my studio roof!

I meet lots of sketchers: some are brimming with confidence, others are terrified, and there’s often very little relationship between the level they’re at and their level of confidence. In this episode I suggest ways to beat that fear - to give yourself a good talking-to - and while you’re doing that, to sketch your coffee cup. Also: kids’ art class coming up on Saturday afternoons Irish time, wit...

Concentrating on watercolour-first in this week’s episode: Galway City Distillery with its shiny copper stills and vats is an urban sketcher’s paradise. I demonstrated capturing reflections in their working gin lab, and again at the water’s edge, sketching the stunning traditional Irish west coast boat, the Galway Hooker. They were in town for the annual race across Galway Bay. Proud of my city th...

I’ve become an illustrator for the Barn Owl Project and in this episode I share a few things about these lovely creatures that you probably knew already. I record the entire episode during a thunderstorm, and I hope my terror doesn’t come through in the recording!

This week I share my thoughts on the wisdom of driving on an unfamiliar side of the road, beside someone with strong ideas on how best to do that. Later, I give you a solution to a ruined sketchbook page. And the poem at the end? Twentieth century, not nineteenth. Forgive my ignorance!

This week I’m coming to you from a little garden in a resort on the fabulous island of Menorca (or Minorca, as you prefer) where I’m sharing tips for sketching your family when you’re all together somewhere beautiful, and where no one is watching the clock.

In this week’s episode I out myself as a petty, jealous woman, and vain with it. But you can’t take yourself too seriously in this game or you wouldn’t last the distance: it helps to see the funny side of your vanity. Later, I get into the nitty-gritty of making food look delicious in a sketch.

Thirty episodes is quite the milestone and I’m thrilled to celebrate it with this extra-long story of me and my mum Cinnie spending a few days sketching together in the beautiful Burren. It was magical! I finish off with an account of a trip to a shooting range in County Kerry, where five total novices try their hand at target practice. One of us turns out to be a hustler!

In today’s episode I share more of my favourite sketch tips. My mother Cynthia (Cinnie) is coming to stay with me this week and we’re going sketching together, so I figured I’d share our common artistic heritage with you all…Episode illustration is my older brother (the one who knows all the family history) cooking a clam curry with my youngest, Liv.

This week’s episode is jam-packed with tips, harvested from my new Twitter account where I’ve been sharing them over the last two or three months. Now I broadcast them to you, the People!

I was very privileged to be initiated into the secret world of barn owls, after meeting an owl man called John. I’ve snuck in a bit about French people too - and a few tips on sketching glasses of beer!

Dans cet épisode je vous raconte des histoires d’un festival superbe- Clermont Dessine, un rendezvous d’ateliers ou on pouvait apprendre des clés pour mieux croquer!

I was hugely honoured to be invited to teach at Clermont Dessine this June. Here’s a little bit of deepest France for you. Francophiles please form an orderly queue 😆

In this episode I take you with me on a little boat trip off the coast of Mauritius at the height of the tropical summer, and introduce you to some of the lovely people I meet along the way. I think I read too fast, for which I apologise.

In this week’s episode I inspire a Ukrainian refugee with my book Dublin in Sketches and Stories but end up coming on too strong and probably lose her. Never mind, sketching my way to Dublin was a lovely way to spend a June morning.

In this week’s episode, I use the very convenient subject of statues to explain a way to capture light, whether strong sunlight or more diffuse. Less is very much more when it comes to trapping sunshine on paper!