Sunday sketch adventure

The Dublin fruit and veg market opened in 1892 and closed in 2019. It's a beautiful Victorian structure and the red bricks glow in the winter afternoon sun. If you had been there last Sunday, you would have seen a band of intrepid sketchers braving the cold to capture this beautiful architecture. Well, it's not that cold in Dublin, but when the sun goes in and the wind picks up, you feel it in every bone of your body!

I feel very strongly about sketching Dublin before it disappears. Before the pandemic, there were plans to transform it into a fancy market, a bit like the Borough Market in London. Now, well, the economy isn't doing so well, a lot of shops are closing around Dublin. So, we don't know what's going to happen. Hopefully it won't be left to collapse, only to be replaced by a bland modern hotel, like many that are sprouting in the area at the moment.

If you head to Dublin Sketchers, you will see the work we do in documenting the city as it currently stands. That's what I love about urban sketching, it's our collective works that tells the story of Dublin, from so many different perspectives and in so many different styles.

Before I sketched the market, I had lunch (Malabar curry in Cornucopia), then pastel de nata and tea in Café Lisboa near Capel Street - their beautiful teapots are reason enough to go there, in my humble opinion! The pastel de nata is a bonus!

Then we went to the pub and I sketched Hari. Before the pandemic, we used to look at each other's sketchbooks after 4pm. Now, most of us just continue sketching. It's a bit of a different dynamic. But I miss looking at everyone's sketchbooks, as there is a whole narrative in a sketchbook, as opposed to just one page or one spread. Which reminds me that I need to do a video flipthrough. There's a long list of others things that need to be done first! But I'll be sure to post it here when it's done!

Close-ups

Urban Sketcher photos

A photo of us in the pub, as you can see absorbed in finishing our sketches or sketching each other across the table. Photo credit: Alice Campbell