In an attempt to stay warm this winter, in an inadequately insulated Edwardian house, I have been layering up undergarments, clothes and scarves – to a colourful extreme. I could easily be wearing the full rainbow in separate, single-colour items at this time of year. Contrasting colour combinations take the tedium out of getting dressed…
Delphi Valley Ireland – a journey into my visual memory Driving through the Delphi Valley in Connemara on route to Westport as the sun was setting recently gave me a special kind of challenge. The batteries of both camera and phone had run out of juice just when the scenery was becoming a glowing, spectacular vision of beauty – but I…
Nude in boots! Wouldn’t it be great to make life a little easier every day? Today I’m experimenting with posting from my phone…. It’ll be interesting to see how successful this turns out to be – as I’m really hoping that it’s an extra option that will help me to blog more often. Back to…
Beaming Beth – a smiling child portrait in watercolour Beautiful Beth was a little more of a challenge to paint than her sister Anna, as her big smile gives me another detail to paint – her teeth! They can be difficult to paint, as I found with one of my self-portraits – giving myself a…
“Favourite Things” watercolour child portrait – with toys One from the archive… As a small boy Conan had a few favourite toys… and he liked puddles, but most of all he liked playing in puddles. This is his puddle portrait!
Watercolour child portrait – Anna After a few days break in daily painting and daily posting I’m back with a watercolour portrait of Anna. Watercolour seems to be the perfect choice when it comes to painting children. It’s really important to keep the painting as simple as possible when portraying youth… no unnecessary lines or…
Another double dose of Downton Portraits! I haven’t been feeling well for the last couple of days and painting felt like too much of an effort… but I couldn’t actually keep away from my drawing board and I found that, although I didn’t have patience for paint, I did still want to draw. My short…
Mary, Mary Had a bit of a Downton day yesterday and grabbed an old pic of the three Crawley sisters from an early series of Downton Abbey. I had in mind that I wanted to create a Fauve style portrait – Lady Mary Crawley looked just the job! I set off with my oil pastel…
A Family Face – Remembering Auntie with a Portrait A few months ago my Uncle asked if I could paint him a picture of his late wife and I collected some photographs from him for the likeness. None of them really stood out as being ‘just’ Jean though and I worried about it for a…
Ruth as Steam Witch I received some lovely photos of Ruth, all bewitched for Halloween Steam, at the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland’s seasonal train trips with the message: “She wants to be painted as the witch!” That’s just what I like to see and hear – and I was most happy to oblige. Probably…
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