Our journey West is coming to an end, maybe. We're on James Street and there's not many more cafés to shelter in. But as long as it's dry, I'm happy to sketch on the street. I'm working in a Stillman and Birn hard back sketchbook. It's about A4 in size and is portrait. Definitely easier to hold without a support than my more familiar landscape sketchbooks.
I started with a sketch inside a café, catching what I could of people at tables around me. This was a good warm-up sketch, but I often find sketching in cafés not satisfying at all, in that I can't see properly because someone is sitting across the way, and also there's always a lot of chatting. Don't get me wrong, I love the chatting. But it means that I'm not really thinking about my sketch, and it ends up being disjointed.
So I headed out on to the street, and saw the James Street Post Office across the way, with Guinness buildings behind it. The footpaths are quite wide around there, so I just stood with my back against a wall, and I sketched in ink. My fingers were frozen, despite my warm clothes and heavy mittens. So it was time to move.
I had left a blank page in my sketchbook after sketching in Legit Coffee Co. a few weeks ago. I wanted to come back to Meath Street and explore it some more. So I stood beside a bicycle parking area and looked back towards Thomas Street and its beautiful buildings. Tea and wine merchants and surgeons! The building with the big arch in the center was a warehouse for Powers Distillers.
Here are the sketches at various stages of development.
On location:
Colour and text added at home later.
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