Aungiers Street

A great afternoon with Dublin Sketchers on Aungiers Street (it rhymes with danger by the way). Got a good spot at the top of steps with a railing to put my sketchbook on. I have probably sketched the Swan pub before, but each time is a different adventure. I'm using colour pencils these days instead of watercolour. The weather has turned damp (very wet today, as I'm writing this on the 18 November actually) and I don't have the patience to wait for watercolour to dry. Like the other day, I worked quickly with a light grey marker first to establish proportions That red chimney was much lower initially, with too little space for the ground floor. When I felt I had enough, I went into the café across the way, hoping to sketch people, but the view out the window was blocked by their huge advertising panels, so I snatched what I could. 

And we were told by the manager in the pub when we met there at 4pm that we were not allowed to sketch strangers, for GDPR reasons. I think that was a bit much, but it's their premises, so they can make the rules. If they had seen my people sketches, I don't think they would have been so worried, though!

Here is how they looked when I was done on location. As you can see, I do about 90% of the sketching on location. But if the sketch needs something more, I will add to it when I get home. 

Diary painting - unstuck

Got a bit stuck with my diary painting. Then unstuck. I glued some translucent Japanese paper on top of parts of the painting that I thought didn't work. Wrote stuff in yellow ink and white resist pencil. Then added a yellow wash, mixed with some carmine and another red to merge it better. What to do next?

Tram

I was too tired. I wasn't going to sketch. I was just going to watch. But once I joined the Zoom, and listened to the others chatting about how they were going to approach this scene (from videos that Suhita took in Turkey), I couldn't resist. I picked up a few pencils and drew from 3 or 4 stills I took from the videos.  I probably should make the 3 people at the front stand out more, but I was happy with how the tram turned out!

Composition - Abstract

I had another go at the Composition assignment, starting with a light abstract layer. Had a great time with this, playing with small and big shapes, different types of shapes and deciding where to place them. With watercolour, I have the extra dimension of edges, soft, hard, rough, which adds to the elements described by Louise. Some of the pieces remained purely abstract, others evolved into landscapes, which is what I'm interested in. Lots of joyous shapes flying around the page! And somehow I have no problem keeping whites in abstract compositions!

The colours I used, except I forgot to photograph the tube of Cobalt Turqoise.

forgot to photograph my tube of Cobalt Turquoise!

Pencils4Tea 14 November

This was my second time attending the Pencils4Tea portrait session. It took me a little while to find my rhythm, but I got there in the end. The time of a song isn't long, anything between 2 and 5 minutes. And I don't see the whole picture, just one detail after another, until about half way through, when I actually thought to myself "just lightly pencil in the overall shape and incline of the head and hands, then just go for it", and it worked out much better! I worked in pencil (Blackwing) and watercolour. My paper buckled a lot. It added to the effect. A little bit of colour pencil when I had time. But the lesson here is that I'm better off when I reduce the tools! And hands are hard!

This was a cinema

I had a busy morning, with a few calls to make. So by the time I arrived on location to sketch the AXA insurance building, which used to be a cinema on Mary Street, the other sketchers were well under way. Never fear! I pulled out my light grey marker and worked super quick to establish the main volumes. I work in an A4 sketchbook, so there's a lot of page to cover. What interested me most was the interplay between the elaborate building at the Christmas decoration dangling above the street to the right of it. I was a gloriously sunny day, but cold. I could have sat in the sun, but then I would have been blinded as I needed to be looking South to see the beautiful windows. So I sat in the shade of the building itself. After the grey marker, I used my Sailor Fude to sketch the building. Then some colour pencil for more details. Finally, I added the blue sky and the sunny reflections from the buildings across the way. Lots of light dancing in Blue and Yellow! Straight lines? I don't do that!

Composition

Finding this the hardest assignment so far, I think. I will go back and try the abstract version - hopefully it will loosen something up. Also, I shouldn't have worked on all four on the same page. I just get too influenced by what's already there and I find it too hard to come up with different compositions. But, for better or for worse, here is my interpretation of the representational version. A few trees at the foot of a mountain on the Beara Peninsula. 

I should have put those tiny trees on the left. They would have balanced the composition better.

Beechwood

We're continuing with our exploration of Ranelagh, this time in the Beechwood area. Lots of interesting houses, shops and cafés. A lovely place to live, I would imagine, if you can afford it. And did you know that Maureen O'Hara, the Hollywood actress, was born on Beechwood Avenue and acted in the Abbey Theatre before she went to America! I did a quick poll in the pub after sketching. None of the younger generation had any idea who she was! Some of our new Irish didn't know who Padraig Pearse was either. It's a shame I got rid of a lot of my books in my latest wave of tidying-up, or I could have given them a few books about Irish History for kriskindle! It's funny, I take it for granted that if you're living here, you would know about these things, at least the basics. Padraig Pearse is the basics!

FYJ Week 8 - Day 5 - Muted colours

That's probably as muted as I can go! I have to say, at this stage, I just want to go back to my art practise. I am tired of assignments.

Still, it's interesting to move saturation to 0 to see that I still have a pretty strong tonal contrast.
 

FYJ Week 8 - Day 4 - Colour exploration continues

All of my previous attempts had a bit of everything, warm cool, vivid muted, dark light. So I was inspired by the example from the Q&A on Wednesday, where a student painted an orange square surrounded by cerulean blue, then muting the cerulean blue until it got quite dark as well. Well of course, I'm not as disciplined as that. I have done many colour swatches over the years. Now, I'm more eager to explore directly on the page. 

So here is what I did instead. It meanders, just like my brain does. I tend to paint fairly vivid colours, in a median tonal range. I like routine, and I believe that how I paint reflects that. So it was fun to explore how things looked when I muted them and lightened them.

Camden Street

 It was early November and the sun was shining like a perfect summer's day. Definitely something wrong with the climate. But I couldn't help enjoy the nice weather. And we had shadows!!

FYJ Week 8 Day 3 - different paper

I had paint left in my palette and just wanted to splash it around. Perfect opportunity to use my Seawhite of Brighton cartridge paper. Just love how watercolour mixes on this surface - it's like the paper fibers are soaking the colours into each other and create lovely soft effects.

 

FYJ Week 8 Day 3

Feeling the need to be more representational. Using some darker tones to add volume. Also muting the colours to achieve an autumnal feel. Looking back on these postcard-sized watercolours, I feel I should have added more variety between them, but I like harmony and unity and I don't like change, so maybe this is perfect for me?