Selling Art for Lyme Disease

I have talked about my experience of Lyme disease several times on this blog. It's a big part of my life.
The 28th of October was my 7th anniversary of being infected with Lyme disease: I was bitten by the tick that infected me on 28th of October 2011.

Each year I like to do something to mark it, and if possible to raise money for Lyme Disease Action, one of the few registered charities that is both educating and supporting research into Lyme Disease.

I decided to mark the occasion this year with some art. Both the animals I chose to paint are carriers of ticks in the UK and may be carriers of Lyme Disease. The hedgehog of course holds particular significance to me as I was roleplaying as a hedgehog at the time of being bitten. Never say I don't really get into character.

Each painting started with an ink and fountain pen sketch and was then coloured with water colours before being finished off with a little more ink. While I went down a natural route for the hedgehog I decided to go a little more whimsical with the badger which is painted in a beautiful mixture of teal and magenta handmade water colour paints.

image description: painting in shades of blue and magenta of a badger.
Original Painting by Robin Tynan available to purchase for £35

image description: watercolour painting of  a hedgehog with a mottled green and brown background.
Original Painting by Robin Tynan - SOLD

Both paintings are available as prints from Society6  and all profit will go to Lyme Disease Action.

The original painting of the badger is available to purchase for £35.
Please contact for details.

The Sketchbook Project

The past few months I have been working on improving my drawing skills. In order to encourage myself to draw regularly I decided to participate in the Sketchbook Project.

Photograph of an A5 manila envelope with the heading "The Sketchbook Project" balanced on a person's knee with a tin of pencils balanced on top

This is a project set up in New York that aims to act as an archive and library of artists from beginner to professional. You simply fill up one of their sketchbooks, send it back to them and it becomes a part of their collection free for members of the public, schools, art and community groups to browse.
What I particularly like is that, while for me as a random member of the public I had to pay for the book, the sketchbook is sent free to schools and community groups who wish to participate. This makes art and participation n pubic arts projects far more accessible to low income people and not-for-profit groups. Greater accessibility to the arts is something I strongly support - art shouldn't always be treated as a luxury or as something only other people do. It should be something that all people regardless of background or current financial status feel they can be a part of.

photograph of an open text book on the left showing an upside down Picasso sketch and an open sketchbook on the left showing my pencil copy of the sketch

This, somewhat shaky and poorly filmed video gives you a walk through of my sketches, the things I have learned and how I have developed my drawing over the past few months. (video is subtitled in English)

If you like sketching or painting or want to do more art, I would definitely recommend considering getting a Sketchbook Project book to fill in and to contribute to the project. I found that being part of a bigger project was a really great motivation to pick up the book and draw even on days I might not have felt like it otherwise.