On Location; Finicounda, 23rd April

Sketch made 'On Location' in Finicounda yesterday morning where, because a gale was blowing, I had to resort to parking my car on the jetty and use the car as a gently rocking shelter in which to make this sketch.

Window

I posted an earlier essay at drawing this window on 22nd January 2013.

Almonds

On Location: Koroni

The Versus Bar.

Freshly picked: Broad Beans and Nasturtium flowers

An attempt at essaying a 'looser' style.

Tattersal Castle, Lincolnshire.

While bemoaning the truth that my drawings take me far too long to produce Galway based talented professional water-colourist Róisín Curé kindly suggested I try drawing against the clock.  This drawing, took me ten minutes to draw and a further twenty to colour.  This is far from high-speed sketching, I know,  but, as far as I am concerned a satisfactory start.  According to Róisín practising 'speed-drawing' also helps to free-up drawing style; mine could do with some of that.

Fisherman

Fishing Boat

Fishing boat on hard standing at Agios Andreas.

Across Agios Andreas Harbour

Drawn 'On Location',  9th April 2014

Pádraig Pearse's Cottage, Rosmuck. Connemara, Co. Galway. Ireland

Pearse used this cottage at remote, Irish speaking Rosmuc, as a summer retreat.  It was here that he probably wrote the wonderful panegyric which he read at O'Donovan Rossa's funeral.  Here is the closing paragraph:

"In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps ever again, in a spiritual communion with those of his day, living and dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day, and speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate. This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and with all restraint; but I hold it a Christian thing, as O'Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and, hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of '65 and '67 are coming to their miraculous ripening to-day. Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."

O'Donovan Rossa died, and Pearse's oration was read, ninety-nine years ago but the British Government yet refuse the majority of the people of the six counties to exercise their right to be Irish judged and governed!

The cottage was fired during the Civil War but has since been restored and now is a charming if poignant museum to Pearse's memory.

Drombeg Stone Circle

 Excavated  byProfessor Edward Fahy in 1957, the stones were carbon dated in the 1980s to the eleventh century B.C.

Fastnet Rock and Lighthouse