A Year At My Back Door

My sister Ciara who keeps her lovely Milkmoon blog also keeps a blog called A Year At My Back Door which she updated with photos every few days for a year of the view from her garden which is in Wicklow and looks across at the Sugarloaf. The scenery and light changes dramatically every day and she manages to capture it beautifully. So after a year she decided to do a blurb book and it's absolutely amazing. Check it out here and buy a copy if you like it!

Little Drawings #4

Another little drawing. Don't know who this guy is.

Watercolour and Brushpen on watercolour paper.

Haiku #1

Speaking of Haikus, here's the first of a series of illustrated Haikus myself and Andrew worked on last year for fun. We've made eight of them so far with the intention of getting them published but have had no luck so far. I really love them and think they deserve a weekly outing in a publication don't you think! More to follow...

Dystopia part 37

Dystopia part 37 which will be printed in the April issue of Totally Dublin. Nice Haiku by Andrew, he's very good at them for some reason.

Brushes App

I downloaded the iPhone Brushes app a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out what to do with it until I started seeing other peoples samples online. It's actually a great, really intuitive little application and amazing fun just using your finger as a brush. Here's my first two half decent attempts. I'll upload more as I do them.

Worm Scarf

Blackbird with a worm scarf and hat.

Little Drawings #3

Third in a series of a bazillion and two: Jorge the wonder frog awaits, heart thumping, for the conformation at the final moment of the "Atlantis 2565 BC Olympics Mascot World Series Finale Decider"

In an unfair twist of fate he loses out to Carl the Conger Eel and retreats into life of solitude...

Watercolour and Brushpen on watercolour paper.

Little Drawings #2

Second little drawing: Tommy Cooper practising as a child.

Watercolour and Brushpen on watercolour paper.

Waiting Room

Editorial illustration for Redactive in London through Folio based around embarassing illnesses I worked on last month.

Little Drawings #1

Something I've been meaning to do for ages. I'm going to try and draw or paint a small picture and post it here at least twice or thrice weekly. Ideally I'd do one everyday but I'm a professional procrastinator at times.

I've been dying to try water colours again so I dusted them off and gave it a weird go.

Here's the first: The tone deaf robot.

Watercolour and Brushpen on watercolour paper.

PlayTown Mats™

Over the last few months I've been working through my US agent, The July Group, to develop illustrations for PlayTown Mats™, a Main Street Gardens brand of children’s play mats.

I really loved working on them as they are exactly what I used to draw as a kid, whole towns and cities with roads I'd drive my matchbox cars around all fully illustrated in wonky lines and crazy buildings. So it was great to finally create fully realised versions of what I had as a kid. The great thing about them is that they all interconnect so you can potentially fill a room with a selection of different mats and drive your cars all over them.

I'm working on five different mats at the moment but these are the first two that have been produced and are now on sale. Looking forward to testing them on my nephew Billy, lord of the toy cars.

Dystopia part 36

Andrew had this Dystopia written just before Christmas but it skipped a month in Totally Dublin so I'm only catching up on it now. I went to the Dublin Comic Jam last week and hung out with Bob, Phil and Declan so it was great to draw with them and now have them feature in Dystopia. I must post some of the pics from the comic jam. Amazing and demented stuff...

Apologies lads for the poor recreations of your strips.

Hopefully Liam and Craig will actually get their own TV show some day.

This episode will be printed in the March issue of Totally Dublin.

Blog Awards Shortlist! UPDATE!

Well, this old blog didn't win this year but we had a great time in Cork at the awards. Well done to Pursued by a Bear for winning.

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I'm really delighted to announce that I've been shortlisted as one of five blogs in the Best Arts and Culture Blog section of The Irish Blog awards. This section is sponsored by Poetry Ireland. Thank you very much to the Judges involved! The event takes place in Cork this Saturday which should be a great evening.

Also nominated on the shortlist is a fine collection of blogs including Scamp, Pursued by a Bear, The Asylum and Devious Theatre. Good luck to all.


I've been doing this blog for just over a year and it's really opened up a whole new world to me. My sister Ciara, who has a collection of amazing blogs here and here, inspired me to start a blog and it's been a fantastic way for me to share my work as well create new work specifically for the blog.

Now to try and keep the momentum up for another year...

Mr. Movies

I'm currently working on some postcards and character designs with Vincent Donnelly from Movies.ie for his website and also his Movies Plus mini magazine. I had great fun coming up the design for this superhero character.

I just spotted the first ad today in the mag.

Custom American Football

I was recently chosen as one of 15 artists to customised an American football for the NFL Experience in Tampa, Florida for an exhibition there. My very nice agent in NY The July Group put my name forward and I was delighted to be chosen as one of the 15.

The artists include Aya Kakeda, Daniele Melanie, Oliver Hibert, Darren Brass & Miguel Paredes, Daniel Chang, Erik Sandberg, Roman Klonek, 123Klan, Dr. Alderete, Ron Kurniawans, Thunderdog Studios, Stan Chow and Superdeux.

The exhibition runs from January 24 at the NFL Experience in Tampa, Florida.

I'll get some of the proper press shots of my ball when I get them. In the meantime here's some photos I took myself.