Shane McDonald
Shane McDonald may live in Craigavon now but his ‘art’s at home in Armagh’!
Over two decades on from sitting his GCSE Art – when he walked away with a C grade – Shane has returned to something he truly loves.
And his passion – and talent – comes shining through.
The vividly-vibrant, delicately-detailed scenes, mostly of old Armagh, have grown a grateful audience of fellow Armachians, both at home and abroad, who are truly lapping it up.
People always pine for nostalgia, fond memories of their roots, recalling the changing face of a city, a county, no longer instantly recognisable, the familiarity gone.
Certainly, that may apply to the ever-changing streets, but Armagh has so many landmarks which time cannot touch.
Be it past, be it present, Shane is generating a following through sharing his work on social media, attending local craft fairs, bringing the magic and memories rushing back.
While he may be living in Craigavon, he is a frequent visitor to Armagh, where his parents still live and where Shane attended school, St Patrick’s Grammar, back in the day.
And Shane – who will turn 49 in April – is currently rekindling a relationship with art that he walked out on in favour of music many moons ago.
“I did art up until GCSE and I got a C in it because, you know, I was lazy,” he admits. “It’s sort of the whole having to ‘do art’ put me off it, I would say, for 20 years, and then I saw an article on biro art, just using a ballpoint pen, and I thought I’d give it a go.
“That was in 2013 and I’ve sort of been drawing and doing it ever since. I had that 20 year break, did GCSE Art in 1993, and then it was 20 years later that I just sort of picked back up on it again.”
In the interim, Shane took to teaching music; he had done so at the Marty Rafferty School, based at the Shambles, before going out on his own.
Now, however, he is “taking a bit of a break from that at the minute just to sort of focus more on my art”.
To see Shane’s work on Facebook and Instagram is to instantly fall in love. While all are undoubtedly excellent, personally two, in particular, immediately stood out – one a butcher’s shop at the Shambes, the other Tassagh Viaduct.
But how does he decide what to draw, where does his glean his ideas?
“That one of the butcher’s, it was for an old friend of mine. Her mum was Grimley. It was Grimley’s Butchers, and that’s where they lived. She wanted two bits of art done for her bathroom. She wanted the Tassagh Viaduct done then that one of her family’s house basically and the butchery.
“That one there was done as a sort of commission, but the rest of them I would get from maybe old pictures online, some of the pictures shared even by a few groups on Facebook, and then sometimes I would take old family photos and, if there’s any bits of Armagh on those, then I would use them.
“The likes of the Lennox’s one and stuff, people seem to love that and any of the old ones on Market Street. That’s why I share them on pages on Facebook, because you just think people will appreciate them.
“It’s mostly sort of older Armagh, but other places as well. I’ve drawn a few of Donegal.”
When Shane sees a picture he knows automatically if it’s something he would like to draw. He also seizes upon the suggestions of others, through random conversations, keen to add to his work.
“Anything that I like myself to look at, basically,” is the response when asked what he prefers to draw. “I’ve drawn the Cathedral so many times now and I’m still not sick of drawing it. Even stuff from childhood. I even ended up drawing a filling station I worked in at one point. It wasn’t for printing, it was just for me, just to draw it.
“And there’s still plenty of Armagh landmarks to get through. The odd time it would be on the basis of something somebody says as well. I do craft fairs and somebody would ask me, ‘have you done Victoria Street yet?’. And I’d go, ’No, I haven’t done that yet, but I will, I keep meaning to do it’.”
Shane also takes requests for commissions. And he is quite content to do so. But he is conscious too of his comfort zone…
“Normally it’s from people who want where they grew up drawn or houses and things like that,” he explains. “ The odd time I’d get a request for a portrait. I’m more reluctant to do portraits. I’ve done plenty of them and a lot of people have been happy with them.
“But when you’re drawing portrait… you can put a window in a house out of place, you can draw that slightly out of place, but you can’t put somebody’s nose or eye out of place. Portraits are more time-consuming and I find them a bit more stressful. So I’m happier drawing local scenery, landscapes, and things like that.”
Everyone has that happy place in life, a place in which they delight to return, be that in person or in mind, one which inspires and draws them back fondly.
Shane is no different and recalls earlier days, prompt in reply when asked if he has a favourite work of art.
“I did one of the boat on Bunbeg Beach – bád Eddie up on Magheraclogher beach at Gweedore. I like that one,” he says. “There’s quite a few. It’s hard to pick really, but I do like that, bád Eddie, because I drew it from a picture of it as it was in the 80s and that’s the way I would remember it whenever I used to go on holidays up there.”
There are of course many others of Armagh to which he is equally drawn.
“Ones that I tend to like or favour are the ones that people are interested in, the ones that people want prints of,” he adds.
Anyone who has seen the aforementioned images of the butcher’s and Tassagh Viaduct will have been drawn – no other word really – to their intricacies and detail.
And that’s all down to Shane’s preferred medium with which to work.
He explains: “My favourite medium to work in, I would say at the minute, it’s coloured pencil and biro. I would sort of do the sketch in pencil, then fill in the colour and then do the detail in biro or fine-liner pen. I have tried oil painting and it’s worked pretty well. I would have done a lot of watercolour way back in GCSE days, but really it would be coloured pencil and fine-liner.
“Tassagh Viaduct, that was one of the most detailed ones I’ve done, as was the butchers. It’s very time-consuming biro. That’s what I sort of started again with, whenever I went back to drawing, but I found that it was awful time-consuming. With the coloured pencil it’s a bit quicker. It’s a wee bit like watercolour where you can sort of plaster the paint on.
“The biro and the ones I’m doing now is really just for the detail and outline. The Tassagh Viaduct one, some of it was brick by brick, basically. That can be time-consuming.”
Given the detail, specifically in the Tassagh work, it is evident it is a real labour of love and Shane devotes to each piece whatever time necessary to perfect.
“That piece in total, I would say, could take upwards of 20 hours,” he says. “There was one I did of a shop front that was coloured pencil and biro. There was a good bit of detail in that and I think I timed that at 11 hours, and it was nowhere near the detail of Tassagh Viaduct.
“A lot of my drawings I can do in three or four hours, or six or seven, but something as big as that, or the butcher one, I was glad to see the end of. They would sort of be 20, maybe 30 hours.”
With such an investment of time, you would think it would be more-or-less a full-time vocation.
Shane readily admits it should be and intends to push himself more going forward.
He adds: “I’m not doing it as much as I should, put it that way, but people are starting to show a bit interest now, so I’ll have to maybe up my game a bit, spend more time at it. It’s the discipline of it. You nearly have to treat it like a ‘9 to 5′ job for it to work. I know I should be starting at nine, having a break at lunchtime and then finishing at five for it to work, because the pictures aren’t going to do themselves.
“There was one I was requested to do before Christmas and I got it done in a few days because it was a Christmas present, but then there was another two I was asked to do and they said ’take your time’, which is exactly what I’m doing. It’s been two months and I could have got them finished quicker. I try to get a bit done every day, but not as much as I should be.”
As an artist, he has amassed quite the collection; while he has sold many of the originals, he still has prints available for sale.
“I think of the Armagh ones, local scenery, I’ve drawn maybe 40. In total, including other places and Armagh, I would say maybe 90 or 100. I’ve done other art that’s maybe a wee bit more abstract, and I was doing that during lockdown and things, and I think I counted at one point I’ve about 400 pieces of that, but that’s sort of a separate thing.”
Shane’s work is available to view, and to purchase, via social media, and he also undertakes commissions too.
“ I think what I would hopefully be doing in the future is getting a place where it’s more centralised, where people can look at everything in a gallery,” he says. “Every month we would have a craft fair in the Navan. It’s normally the first Saturday of every month. I think the next one’s on the 11th of April. A crowd of us have stalls there.”
But what of a physical exhibition, some time in the future perhaps? Surely such work demands one!
“It is a possibility,” he agrees. “I did have an exhibition in the information centre in Armagh in 2018. That was miniature work and it went quite well. It’s just getting my act together – and getting enough stuff together.”
To view or buy any of Shane’s prints or to enquire about a commission, get in touch via Facebook, Instagram or phone 079 0247 5750.
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