Finally back to painting! An interpretation of the rocks on Clogher Beach, with Clogher Head in the distance. Someone told me that the rocks looked a bit like mussels. Which probably means I should have included a person for scale. They are big rocks! I'll have to think about that! But for now, I'm happy! (Quarter sheet size - I probably need to figure out where to place my person before I go one size bigger!)
I never miss an opportunity for urban sketching! This is Devitt's pub on Camden Street. I've actually never been inside this pub. But it sure looks lovely from the outside. And they do traditional music too - although 9pm is a tad late for me!
What really interested me about this view, apart from the fact that I was sitting behind a bin, is how we as a nation have embraced outdoor dining and drinking.We didn't have much of a choice I'll hear you say. That's true. But never let a good pandemic go to waste. I think it's wonderful to see outdoors seating and umbrellas everywhere. We've been lucky so far this year, with relatively mild and dry weather. Things might be different when the winter storms start hitting!
PS: I have no idea about the story behind the man holding the clock on the side of the building! If anyone knows, drop me a line!
And if you're interested, here's the whole sketchbook, from start to finish!
Telling the story by creating connecting pages between pages that were created independently, with no plan for connection!
Little people, planets and mushrooms
Some of my connected pages are telling a story that I'm enjoying a lot!
Fish happily swimming in the sea
This is all work in progress. I'm going back over pages that were pure exercises or that felt like they lacked something, and I'm connecting them to the overall story. Can anyone come up with a good story involving fish, crows, circles, mushroom, ladies in lovely long dresses and pumpkins?
This is one of the first exercises we did, basically trying out the various brushes we were going to use for the course. I decided to add little vignettes of the various themes I cover in my sketchbook. And yes, all of a sudden, it's no longer a practise page, but a fun spread where a fish meets his own remains, and where little people are stuck in a bubble. Lots of possible interpretations!
This was a practise page using different brushes to make a long line in watercolour. Adding fish turns it into a river or a pond!
Dublin Sketchers were meeting at Smithfield, so I couldn't pass the opportunity to sketch the Cobblestone pub, a famous traditional music pub currently under threat from a hotel development. It's so sad to see so much of what makes Dublin so special disappearing, taken over by bland office and hotel developments. If it keeps on going like this, there will be nothing for the tourists to come to Dublin for. And we'll have all these empty hotels. I just don't get it! And it makes me so angry. And you might be able to see from my sketch that the three adjacent buildings are boarded up and supported by steels. They were probably acquired by a developer years ago and they've let them collapse to the point that the only thing that can be done is to pull them down and build something new. Why does this keep happening? What is wrong with our planning laws and those who are responsible for their implementation?
I'm still jumping around the pages of this sketchbook, finding connections between unrelated elements! So here, I've decided that my lovely ladies in their fabulous stripy dresses should be floating amongst the fish! One of the ladies was too large to fit on the page, so I let her sleeve float above the water.
Full drawing done on location, colour added in the café later. Did I say it was cold?
Hot food on a cold day. I highly recommend Zambrero, in the Vaults at the top of Harcourt Street. A simple Chilli Zin Carne bowl was exactly what I needed. We kept on chatting about sketching, how long it takes for watercolour to dry in Ireland in November, etc etc. Meanwhile lawyer-types started streaming in for their takeaway lunch, and I just kept on sketching. I added a bit of yellow watercolour pencil when I got home, and called it done!
This is how it looked when I left the place
Trying to capture areas of Dublin that are currently undergoing major transformation. These lovely little houses in front of me, behind the bicycles, used to house shops and cafés. I used to work in the building on the right and would often go for lunch with the other project managers in a café there. Simple fare, homely. Now I suspect these buildings will be gone within the year, to be replaced by more offices and hotels. I just find it so sad that Dublin is being ripped up, and its people ripped off. You can't buy a house in Dublin anymore, there aren't enough being built, and rent is exorbitant, over €3000 monthly rent for a semi-detached in suburbia. And let's not talk about built-to-rent apartments going up everywhere!
Anyways, a lovely time spent sketching this view, including bikes, builders, and a very strange van!
And did I mention it was cold, and I took refuge in a Starbucks with tables in the window!
The next stage in this wonderful Domestika course with Laura McKendry, was to design End Pages, that pick up on the themes I explore in this sketchbook. Fishes, circles/moons/planets, pumpkins, stripes, just to start with! And you might notice that some of the fishes are made of cut-out dresses I had designed for my lovely ladies! Can you see I'm enjoying myself?
