The chimneys

There is always a certain energy when you're sketching on location. On this occasion, I had already done three sketches, and I was getting tired. Plus there was the risk that we might be asked to move on, as it wasn't clear whether this was a private or public space. So I worked with urgency! We were inside the courtyard just beside the Pigeon House. The ESB plant is on the other side and that's not open to the public. But on this side the gate was open, and there were a few cars parked there. There is also a portakabin - I remember doing some work on a computer for a builder who operated from there a few years ago. While my friends stayed a good bit longer to finish their sketches, I left after just a basic pencil structure and one layer of watercolour. To be honest, I didn't think I would be able to create anything worth looking at, particularly when I realised that I had got some of the proportions of the house wrong. So I decided it was best to take a break from it.

I finished the sketch at home the following day. The windows caused me more trouble than I had anticipated. I had to use white marker to do the window frames and it was all over the place. Let me know if you have a good white marker that you could recommend. I would like a white marker for detail and also to write on top of colour backgrounds. I'm quite happy with how I managed to convey the imposing scale of the chimneys, though!

The scene was so huge that I had to tilt my sketchbook to capture it all

I found on the ESB website a photo of the house (from the other side) and the brick chimney and the power station. The other chimneys are all gone and there isn't much left of the long building I think, except for a rusty metal structure. You can see on the photo the coal (bottom right) and the conveyor belt that brings it to the furnace!

Pigeon House was named after a Mr Pigeon, who ran it as a coffee shop where passengers from the ferry could get a cup of tea and a slice of cake after their long journey. It later became a hotel. I think it's used by the ESB now, or the Dublin corporation. It's not open to visitors, which is a pity. The old power station, which was commissioned in 1903, gets a mention in Ulysses.

 This is how it looks from Google Maps now:

And here is a photo I took before I did my first sketch: