St Kevin's Park

30 years I've been in Dublin, and I didn't know this little park existed. That's the beauty of our Dublin Sketchers outings - you never know where you're going to end up! And it feels nice and safe to be part of a group. Because let me tell you, there is no way I would have stayed in St Kevin's Park for more than 5 minutes on a Sunday afternoon if I hadn't known that fellow sketchers were going to appear - as is unfortunately typical in Dublin, quiet little parks tend to be taken over by homeless people, drunks and druggies at weekends. It's probably different during the week, when the park is used by students and office workers alike. So there was one chap sleeping on a bench (he was still sleeping two hours later), and towards the back, there was 3 men, a woman and a dog. They were not young, and they didn't look inebriated so I walked by, said hello, and fussed over the dog (Ruby, who showed me how good she was at sitting!).

Then I picked a spot away from all those and started sketching. At one point, I was approached by a man who had been in the park a while (I thought he might have been one of the sktechers), and he started telling me how he studied in Kevin's Street and became a baker, working for Superquinn, and travelling the world, and winning prizes for his baking. We chatted for a while, then I said I'd better get back to my sketching and he moved on.

At four o'clock, we found that the pub that was our designated meeting point was packed to the rafters, as it happened to be a Tipperary pub, and the All-Ireland Hurling Final was on the telly. So we went to another pub on Camden Street, called Anseo, and we enjoyed a chat about sketching, paper, cats, mathematics and neighbours.

A good way to spend an afternoon.

You'll find everybody's sketches here.

And as you can see, I still had time to sketch the pigeons and a tree. You can pack in a lot in two hours when you set your mind to it!

The pigeon in the centre is my favourite!