Until a few years ago my pen and ink drawing style was getting increasingly ornate. I was getting downright Victorian. The trouble is, that’s great for the artist enjoying himself with the materials and getting off on his own crosshatching; but when you want to deliver a joke it’s normally best to do it with the minumum number of lines. That’s why I turned my style on its head to do the bunnies – and that became my new style.

And very good it is for humour. But when you’ve spent a few years as I have, drawing in a deliberately blunt way, some people get to thinking that’s all you can do. So do I some days. SO – in an occasional series of blog posts showing I’ve got a tiny bit more range, here’s one of my watercolours. I painted this entirely in the location. It’s of a fantastically dramatic shipwreck – the Plassey, a cargo vessel which was hurled high on to the rocks on the island of Inisheer. I’ve spent a lot of time in the west of Ireland, much of it painting, and the rusted Plassey is one of the very few things there that isn’t green or grey. I’m very fond of it.