MHBD's Blog

Trying a few pigments, new to me, except for Holbein's Vermillion, which I love (it's a bit dirty in this swatch)

After a wobbly start, I got into it. So glad Suhita has set up these free half-hour sessions!  

Oil pastel can be a bit too skippy on rougher paper. So I tried a few other options. Unison soft pastels win, hands down. Even after spray-f...

It took me a while to find the spot I wanted. There were too many tourists at the front, big groups blocking the footpaths and the views.  A...

Sometimes, it's best to let watercolour do its thing. I had a lot of water sloshing about on this one. But I wanted to go to bed, so I j...

 

I was impatient and I added some watercolour into a jar that looked like it had some old watercolour in it. I wanted a heavy, gloopy, consis...

Really enjoyed painting this one. I was working from one of the cropped pieces I did the other day, while looking at a landscape from the Be...

For a change, I didn't do a self-portrait while I was at the hairdresser's this time. There were a few bottles and tubes of product ...

Another great thing to do for low-energy days - patterns in gouache. I varied the colours slightly but continued on a similar theme with cir...

I'm still working from my memories of the Beara Peninsula - I think the West of Ireland has a liftetime of inspiration for me. I've ...

When I'm on Capel Street, this is the building I want to sketch. Every time. And every time, I get something wrong, but it doesn't m...

With bombs flying all over the Middle East (and still flying across Ukraine of course), I found it hard to find peace in my practice (week o...

I love busy places. It kind of clashes with my various autistic sensitivities (noise, light, people!!), but once I'm sketching, I actual...

Moonglow, Magic Wizard, Permanent Yellow Deep, Blue Compose and an unknown pink. The more I explore, the more I realise that cold press does...

Spréach means sparkle, and also spirit. Spalp means to burst forth and seems to be used about sunshine. I think Spalp is probably more fitti...

I need to finetune this, but it was magical to create a repeating pattern from one of the gouache pieces I did during Amanda Close's cla...

It wasn't the birds that were travelling. It was me. I was visiting my Mum in Belgium. And decided to apply Andrew James' Bird Math ...

Interesting that since I came back from India, I'm struggling to sketch in Dublin!! The weather isn't helping, that's for sure. ...

 Always fun to catch up with Uma and Andrew on Vivify to see what they're cooking up!

 Click here to see what's on my studio wall on 21 Feb 2026. Lots of ideas bubbling up.

Years ago, I bought a pack of square papers with 60's patterns on them. I never did anything with them. I just liked the shapes and colo...

Need to think about this one. Too many colours? Shapes are not as well defined? Yet, there is something calling out to me in there. I need t...