Views from Collins Barracks

It was a beautiful day, but I was more interested in capturing the heavy clouds bringing showers to the city than a boring blue sky!

The location for Dublin Sketchers was Collins Barracks, the Decorative Arts & History Museum. But the weather was too nice to go indoors. And I didn't want to sketch the building itself, far too intimidating! So I found the perfect view, from the side of the carpark - the Guinness brewery was just across the Liffey.

Here are my steps (pretty standard for a watercolour sketch)

1. I started by drawing the skyline in pencil.
2. I painted the sky, with quite a wet wash - I made it more like a sunset sky. I will have to learn subtlety, but not yet!
3. Then I continued my pencil outline, comparing measurements the best I could (I am hopeless at measuring when drawing!)
4. I switched to ink and drew the main shapes and shadows
5. I finished with watercolour, trying to capture the changes in plane to represent the shadows. The roundness of the tanks (vats?) was a challenge, so I kept the shading simple.
6. I added a little bit of text - the paper was rough watercolour, so I kept it brief.

If I had put a little more thought into it, I could have added this quote from Ulysses "(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)" - next time, I must remember to save a border around the paper with masking tape, so I can write around it!