Custom House

We've been lucky the last few Sundays in January. It's been bloody cold, but the weather has stayed dry. I think this one, the Custom House, was our first meeting of the year. A good few people turned up, with a few new sketchers, which is always lovely. 

The Custom House is a huge building, right on the river, so unless you're on the other side of the Liffey, it's hard to capture it all. On this occasion, I didn't even try! I sat right in front of the central entrance, with its huge dome and statues and I started to sketch in direct watercolour. Because I was so close to it, everything was distorted, but that's a great excuse, isn't it!! 

The Custom House was burnt and badly damaged in 2021, during the war of independence. It was rebuilt at a later stage, with the top under the dome, done in an Irish stone, noticeably darker than the original British stone. There was more restoration work done in the eighties, and a major cleanup in the last few months. There was so much beautiful detail that I noticed while sketching, like one of the statues had a beehive beside her, a symbol of industry I think. The detail in the pediment (yes, I had to spend 10 minutes on Google to find what the triangle bit is called!!) is clear from the ground, with ships, Neptune, Britannia, Hibernia, cherubins, etc. perfectly visible from where I was standing on the footpath.  But have a look at this article for a close-up. The video is quite interesting, if a little hard to hear because of the traffic.

When I was done, I turned around, and painted the colour of the river Liffey.

PS: the little circle with a Japanese lady is a sticker I added later to cover an element of my drawing that didn't work so well.

It was a cold day of course, and I was delighted when the staff at the new visitor centre invited us to come in from the cold. There is an exhibition about the fire and the history of the building, but I was more interested in the view from the windows. And the heat from the radiators. I had to take my coat off it was so warm!

The Ulster Bank building feels like it's been there forever, and the volumes are really simple once you look at it from this point of view!

And of course there's more construction going on, forever eating away at the beauty of the old Dublin.

I coloured these two at home. Here's how they looked on location.

And the Urban Sketcher shots, which are really hard to do in the winter!