St Stephen's Green

I'm quite prolific these days, making the most of the good weather we've had. But I'm so far behind in posting online that this blog is quite out-of-sync with my life! Never mind!

So this is a post about the sun shining in Dublin and people enjoying the good weather in St Stephen's Green. As I'm writing this, the sky has turned really grey and it might even be raining!

Anyways, still trying to put into practise what I learned in Porto - trying to draw people-focussed vignettes. The location for Dublin Sketchers that Sunday was the Royal Hibernian Academy. But the sun was shining. I knew it wasn't going to last - by August, an Irish summer is pretty much over. So I headed to the park instead. 

First, I sat on the grass in the shade at the main nexus - it has fountains, flower beds, and lots and lots of tourists. What caught my eye was all the people taking photos, so I tried to sketch the verb "take a photo" and related activities. The two guys on the left are not tussling for the camera - they're both looking at the camera screen to admire one of the shots just taken by the guy on the right. I need to improve on that, but you can see that they are both looking at the same thing, so that's a start. I'm particularly happy with the guy on the right. I kept him very abstract, but his posture looks quite convincing (in my not-so-humble opinion). I added the supporting landscape afterwards, moving flower beds and trees as needed to put together my story.
When I was finished, I chatted to a young woman from Kerala, she's studying literature in Ireland, and she had watched me sketch. We chatted about A Suitable Boy and Sense and Sensibility. And then I moved to my next spot.

There was a man doing yoga stretches. I used my Marabu pens (the fancy one from Porto and the cheap one from Lidl - they behaved the same!). But I think he noticed me and he soon moved on. I turned 90 degrees, and I had my next scene right in front of me.

Three Spanish girls were chatting away int the shade of a tree. They were deeply absorbed in their conversation and never noticed me.

So that was me done for the afternoon. Time to catch up with the others and their sketches.
Maybe that was the last beautiful day of the summer. I'm glad I spent it sketching!