Here how I pictured Van Morrison as he was:
Traveling down an open road with youMaking plans for all we hope to doSo much to say to you, so I’ll drive slowWe can drive to France, or down to Monte Carlo
Once in a Lifetime Feelings – Click here for the soundtrack on YouTube.
Van Morrison
So much to say to you…
What a pleasure to see Sir Van again, this time in Belfast! And what a performance!
Oh, and dinner included a little birthday cake to celebrate his 80th!
This freehand digital painting was done on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Sketch Club app, with a final sharpening tweak in iColorama. I started it yesterday on the train from Belfast back to Dublin and finished it off in our room last night at a residence hall on the campus of Trinity College. The whole image took me a little under two hours. Obviously, I’m rounding things up to the nearest 1,000 for the fun of it. One of these days I can come back to this image and finish her off, but for now I’m still enjoying the tunes in my head. Hey, I painted Van on my iPad back in 2014, click here for that.
Here’s a look at the whole team, virtuosos everyone of them!
Van with the whole band
Play list: June 24, 2025.
After Gloria, and once Van had left the stage, the band played on for another 15 minutes improvising their asses off. We all stood in amazement.
Click here to learn more about the Hotel Europa
Hotel Europa, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Technical: A Bradley Quinn photo on Facebook of Van Morrison and colleagues caught my eye. Try here just in case. I saved and cropped the image to my iPad and imported it into Procreate, where I used it as a side-by-side, free-hand reference.
Here’s a progress video of most of the drawing.
portfoliolongo 