National Museum

Museums are free in Ireland. Which I think is wonderful. You can pop in for a quick look at your favourite painting any time you walk by. Or explore a section in depth and ignore the rest. I'm very happy to be paying taxes so anyone can discover more about art or history! Well, I want infrastructure, health and education too.

Last Sunday's outing was at the National Museum, Kildare Street (Archeology). Famous for its bog bodies, gold chalices and Viking artefacts. There was a queue outside its doors at 2 o'clock, when the doors were opening.

Though I didn't even get into the Museum itself. It was dry. I was well wrapped up. I found a nice little spot across the road. And I think it's such a beautiful building that I was much more interested in the architecture than its contents. It's built in the Victorian Palladian style. And apparently, its domed rotunda is based on the Pantheon in Rome. I didn't tackle the rotunda this time.

Instead, I decided to sketch a section of the outside facing the street. Oh boy, did I regret it! It's time I moved to the next lesson of SketchingNowBuildings - a whole range of tutorials dedicated to working in a structured way! Because I really need to be able to fit a whole building on a page some day!

Having a passerby (a man of course) telling me I should be using a finer pen didn't help one bit. Whoever he is out there, I want him to know I am cursing him for life!

Still, what I did worked out ok - I just ran out of space for the ground floor!