Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Rathmines, far from the maddening crowd

Maybe I was camera shy? But on that Sunday, I stayed away from everyone else sketching near Rathmines bridge. I just found 3 locations that combined perfectly for me to explore the folding-page technique I learned from Mário Linhares in London in the summer.

First I sketched a laneway at the side of Rathmines church, where the dome dominates the mews. The road is so narrow that most people have traffic cones in front of their houses in order to reserve parking for themselves. Nothing worse than coming home from dropping the kids to school and finding that you can't get parking in front of your house. Most of the parking in the area is pay-parking, and I guess this laneway is popular with commuters, much to the annoyance of the residents.


Second, I moved to Lower Rathmines Road, and found a spot where the dome can be seen above the row of Georgian houses. I think a lot of these houses, which are 3 to 4 stories tall, are still divided up in rental accommodation, hence the many bins in front of the entrance. Rathmines is still popular with students and young people who want to live within walking distance of town. The main street certainly hasn't been gentrified to the same extent as other areas in the same postal code of Dublin 6.



And then, I joined a few other sketchers in the Grove Road café overlooking the canal, and I sketched the language school building on the other side of the canal. It's a lower building, and I'm not an expert in architecture, but the windows are certainly Georgian, so it offered a good continuity with the previous sketch. And as you can see, I got faster and faster, moving from a detailed watercolour sketch to pen and grey marker to speed things up!


It would seem I forgot to take a picture on location for my third sketch!



And for those of you who get to the bottom of my posts, here is a bonus video!


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