Is there a budding artist in your house?
This Saturday, May 16 2020, is National Drawing Day and it's being marked by a wide range of museums, libraries and cultural organisations right across the country. Chief among them is the National Gallery of Ireland.
When I was a child, I often visited the National Gallery with my family. I will always remember one mid-term break from school when my granny took me to drawing sessions for kids that were taking place in the gallery.
A huge group of under 10s sat on the floor in front while one of the curators explained the story behind the painting that we were looking at. We then all drew our own versions of the painting with crayons and coloured pencils.
I've never been particularly good at drawing – I much prefer to craft than art – but I remember really enjoying that day and being immensely proud of my own rendition of St Jerome removing a thorn from a lion's paw.
More importantly, it began a life-long love of the National Gallery for me, and set the tone of my interaction with it: not seeing it as somewhere serious and unwelcoming but a collection of fascinating stories told through a collection of art that belongs to every single Irish person.
It's sadly not possible to visit the Gallery at the moment but your little ones can still begin their own relationship with the national art collection for this weekend's Drawing Day. Log on to its
website where you'll find a selection of art themed activities that the whole family can enjoy, as well as links to other galleries and institutions celebrating Drawing Day.
I particularly love the 'colour the collection' section, which has free downloads of some of the Gallery's most famous paintings for kids to colour in. They include Woman Reading a Letter by Gabrielle Metsu, Boy Eating Cherries by Pierre Bonard and The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by William Frederick Burton, which is my own favourite painting from the collection.
If National Drawing Day leaves your little ones eager for more gallery goodness, there's also a virtual tour available online.
