Railway Union Food Market

Another rainy and cold day. We did get some nice weather in between, but it never seems to be on the day I'm sketching!

Louise found this great location - the Railway Union Food Market near Sandymount. There was room for us to sketch without being in the way of customers and traders. There was an area with benches under an awning to get out of the rain. And there was bathrooms!!

And I did get a hot chocolate to warm up after doing my initial sketch. And a salad bowl (delicious), a cookie (sooo good!!) and three small cacti (the cutest) to take home. I must go back again to check out their other offerings. There was a lovely flower stall, a big vegetable area and a minimal-packaging grocery too. 

I started with a little warm-up people sketch, to get a feel for what was there and how I could put it all together.

I did leave the cute dogs out of my sketch in the end. I focussed on the vegetable stall, which had a lot of variety. I sketched the main structures and people while standing up, so I could get my proportions right. Then I sat down to add the detail. And when the rain got too heavy, I went to the sheltered area at the back to add colours. Which was a good idea as I changed the colours to increase the focus on one area only, using more muted colours for the other elements.

The sheltered area at the back faces towards the cricket green and not much of interest close by. So I did two sketches of the roofs and chimneys in the distance, including the Poolbeg power station chimneys, which were literally disappearing in the mist when the rain got heavier! So iconic Dublin.

I did two versions, one in direct watercolour, and one in ink and grey marker. I like them both!

Coloured inks

Mmm. I think this needs a lot more work. But the blue ink turned out better than I thought - Noodler's Liberty's Elysium.

small brushes

I'm a big brush painter. I lack the patience and skill to paint with a small brush. I did try with these 4 pieces of the same view, but I found it very frustrating, even with this postcard-sized format. The view is the road from the beach near Páidi Ó Sé near Ventry. With all the building edited out. I tried the grey church roof in one of them, but disappeared it in the sky wash!

Funny as we're getting to the end of Direct Watercolor month, I think I'm regressing rather than progressing. But that's all right. Let's think of it as a foundation for all these wonderful watercolours I'm going to paint in the next few months!

Platinum Carbon Ink

Trying out Platinum Carbon ink from my little sample bottles. It glides on the paper like a dream. Not quick enough to capture our cat, but that's more to do with my skills than the ink. The tomato plant didn't move so much! No fruit yet. But there are a few little yellow flowers, so I'm hopeful!

Ringsend

Really liking this whole area - this time, I stayed near the library in Ringsend. It was a sunny day, but cold in the shade, and with a wind! The forecast was for rain all day, but Met Eireann clearly got it wrong. I had packed my bag with rain in mind, though, and didn't bring my watercolours, just markers and pencils. It was a good opportunity to try something different!

Sketches in the order I did them.

For this first one, what attracted me was the row of cottages with all these pointy porches and big chimneys, but I was actually seeing very little of each house, because of cars parked in front of them, so I had to face my fear of cars and incorporate them in the drawing. I'm finding these days that I tend to do my general drawing standing up so I can see perspective and relative sizes better, and once I have sufficient information, I sit down. Sketching while standing is tough on my arm, so it's great motivation to sketch quickly!! I actually started with the house on the right, as it was giving me a straight-on frame of reference that I could measure everything against.

I love this neighbourhood, a feel of the old Dublin, where everyone knows each other, and people say hello on the street. But I guess that like everywhere else in the city, it's rapidly changing, with prices going up and a more transient population moving in. It's not far from all the Google and Facebook offices after all, so I imagine that these houses are being snapped up by high-earners, who will probably be moving somewhere else within a few years. 

At this stage, I got cold. It was a gloriously sunny day, but with a cold breeze. So once I was finished my first sketch, I moved to a sunny and sheltered spot, just beside that pink hanging basket above!

I didn't give me the same kind of view down the street, but I got really interested in all the shapes connected across my page.

I'm not one to spend 2 hours on one sketch. So I moved again, this time behind the library where I found another sunny sheltered spot looking towards the new Dublin! The highest apartment block in the city I think. 22 stories high. Capital Dock. But the old Dublin is what interests me of course, so the modern highrise is only an outline in my sketch!

And here are my urban-sketcher-style photos. I'm useless at taking those!

And the sketches as they were when I left the location. Mostly, I just added text, except for the one with pencil colouring, for which I added more colour at home.

Trying out ink samples

Don't you love it when you get a delivery of ink samples, and you can spend an hour or so trying them out!!  It will be a difficult choice to decide which ones I'd like to order now!! Which ones would you choose?

Life Drawing - Hayley

Life Drawing with Hayley at Dublin Drawing online. I just love these quiet sessions. At the moment, I'm using ink and a pencil mostly. Not as much Artgraf as I used to, as I'm more interested in learning how to draw the finer details. I've got a long way to go. It will be interesting to see what materials I'll use when we go back to in-person life drawing. For now, I love my Friday evenings without having to get into town!

Trying darks and neutrals, and then reverting to what makes me happy

Lots of leftover paints in a number of palettes - time for a clean-up! That means I'm not using fresh paint out of the tube, but fresh enough, with a little spritz of water!

I had lots of Graphite Grey, Schmincke Neutral Tint, some New Gamboge, Indanthrene blue, and a small bit of Lunar Blue.

So I searched Landscape in my Google Photos. Or Cliffs? I'm not sure, but I found some photos from the Beara peninsula and the Dingle Peninsula too, and I recreated an idea of the places rather than an accurate description.

Like all in the current series, they've been painted 4 to a quarter sheet, so about postcard-size each.

Darks - for me, this is dark!

The two main darks are Schmincke Neutral tint for the purple mountain in the distance and Daniel Smith Graphite Grey for the rocks in the foreground. This is a view from the top of the Healy Pass looking at Glanmore Lake, on the Beara Peninsula. It's a view that's continuing to intrigue and elude me!

Neutrals

I rarely paint with so few colours! This is from a photo I took on the Dingle Peninsula, near Dunquin, where the road follows a river down to the sea. When I took the photo, the left side of the river was in sunshine, full of Autumn warm colours, and the right was in deep shadow. These 4 are my interpretation of the scene, first in greys only, then with colours added.

What makes me happy

After these, I needed to go to a bright colour, so in comes Nickel Azo Yellow, and other happy colours. Again, a view from the Dingle Peninsula.

The only conclusion I come to is that I like bright colours, and dry brush!

Sketching Playlab - Line Dancing

Exploring vertical abstract compositions with Sketching Playlab - very enjoyable as always, but also full of learning moments! And of course, I couldn't resist introducing a horizontal or two and a pinch of curved lines!

Black

Experimenting with a few tubes of paint that were languishing in a drawer. Well, it turns out that Neutral Tint in the Schmincke range isn't so neutral! And Schmincke Hematite Black is actually a green pigment!

Then I played with a variety of tools in black. These little experiments are great for the days when I have no time but still want to do some art!!

Searching Sunset in Google Photos

Sometimes, I just scroll through my Favourites in Google Photos. Sometimes, I search for something, big waves, trees, or in this case, sunsets!

As I decided to be kind to myself this month and only paint thumbnails (four to a quarter sheet, each more or less postcard size), I'm going to have a lot of material to paint in a larger format over the next few months! It's great to be using my Google Photos as a source of inspiration - it's a bit like all these things I've saved on Pinterest over the years and never look at! To actually look at them, to use them for something that makes me happy, it's like all these photos are finally fulfilling their destiny!

Two of the pieces are "derivative", a subject that's been much discussed in the 30x30 group. One is a copy of a painting I came across on Instagram and screenshot because I loved its simplicity. The other is inspired by a photo taken by a relative in America. I always love looking at her photos on Facebook and always thought they would make a good starting point for a painting. So there you go.

A copy of a painting by Juan Saturio. I wouldn't even call it a copy. The original is so much more interesting!. Some Genuine Hematite, some raw sienna, and probably some hansa yellow deep. A dash of PV19 mixed in with the yellow to create a rusty colour.

Trees in front of our house.

Houses in the neighbourhood. I loved the row of houses and the golden sky behind it.

And this one is based on a photo of Collins Pond, taken by Cheryl André. Cheryl is a distant relative, by marriage. My father had an uncle (not a direct uncle? I'm not 100% sure) who emigrated to America when he was a young boy. The two sides of the family kept in touch. I remember Elise well, the uncle's daughter. She came to Europe often, and stayed with us many times. She was independent-minded and I always admired her. And more recently, I got to know David, the uncle's son. Well, Cheryl was married to David. My parents actually met her on their one trip to America, many moons ago. I still remember the Barbie Tent they brought back home for me - it had yellow sleeping bags, and a little plastic camp fire, and many more accessories that I have now forgotten. Well, Cheryl turned up on an art Facebook group I had also joined a few years ago, and we've been Facebook friends since! And this is the view from her house somewhere on the East Coast of America!