Evening sky

Painted from a photo. I'm happy with the colours for the sky, but the ground is too contrived. I was too impatient and didn't observe properly. Plus I should have drawn the cars parked there - it would have looked more real I think. Good lessons learned.

By the river

I'm really happy with this one, although it's very simple. I painted it from a photo I found on Facebook, posted by the son of a friend. It was such an interesting view, with vibrant colours and strong darks. Who said greens were hard?

An eye, half a face, a full face

I feel I should have stuck to drawing just the eye area, but I got carried away. Really it's noses I should be practising! And then trying to do the other half of the face was so hard!! It might have worked out ok if I had painted my neck - I know I always wear scarves, but the top of my neck should show all the same!!

Little roses

I love splashing paint on the page. Best done outdoors when I feel I can give it my all! I got a little pot of tiny tiny roses and I wanted to immortalise them! Well I painted them bigger than they are, but I think I caught the spirit of them. Painting a second layer was hard - I had to be careful not to overwork it (see first layer below). But I got positive feedback, so I'm glad it worked out. And Perylene Green is fantastic for dark greens. 

Part of me still feels like the first layer was the best part of it. I just love to see how the different pigments interact. Look at how the pink bleeds into the green, and how the darker reds pull all the attention away from the paler pinks  - this is why I love watercolours so much!

Berries

I am in direct watercolour mode, exploring everything I can do with a brush and no pencil or pen! Blueberries were harder to paint than I would have thought, but I did manage to capture some of the colours.

I am taking part in the Dublin Sketchers sketchbook project for Olives, Oysters and Oranges at the Olivier Gallery. I currently have three sketchbooks inspired by Ulysses, well, one full and two about halfway! It's amazing how exploring a book that's considered difficult by most through sketching can open new and interesting ways to enjoy it. I've actually come to think of Ulysses as 'just a bit of fun' and its characters as 'deeply human'.

'Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation.'

Sketching while waiting

Sketching in a car park. Need more practise. Need more time

Laundry day

Some days, I just don't have time to go out into the world to sketch, so I draw what's in front of me. On this occasion, the laundry.

I have this magic clothes line from Brabantia - It's fixed to the shed's wall and it folds to a neat little package when not in use. The perfect solution for us, as I've been trying to reduce our use of the dryer. Now, that said, we've had such lousy weather that I've had to use the dryer too, but any chance I get, I open the line and I love the smell of fresh clothes, except when our neighbour decides to have a barbecue!

Killiney Hill

It was raining. And the only view I could get from the car was to the left, so this is the view I painted. Which is a nice change, as I normally would be more attracted to the view to the South, with Bray Head and the Sugar Loaf.

'BLOOM: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele.
(Laughter.)'

Painting from a drawing

I am also in #another30daysofartwitháine, so I am kept busy in my free time! Amazing how efficient that makes me! This one was about painting from an existing drawing. So I decided to use one of my life drawings, as they just end up in a drawer under a bed. It felt good to give these drawings a new lease of life by painting from them, in #directwatercolor of course. I'm just surprised I didn't add a Ulysses quotes for #Bloomsday2019!!

(this one is my favourite)

Sculpture

There is an interesting sculpture near the DLR Lexicon. My sketch doesn't do it justice. I should have used pen to help define it better, but I am in #30x30directwatercolor mode so it will remain as is for now!

I am also in #Bloomsday2019 mode, so there you go:

'Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?'

Clouds

Hard to paint clouds when you're outside and it's windy and your watercolours are drying faster than you can paint, even though this is Ireland and the temperatures are barely getting to 16 degrees celsius! Should have wetted my palette better and made juicier washes!

It would be interesting to see how many weather references there are in Ulysses? June 16 1904 was supposed to be a beautiful warm summer day, so maybe not that many!

'Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm.'

Sandycove

 A bit twee maybe, but then again, I went direct watercolour, no pencil no pen. Yes, it is #30x30directwatercolor month, so my pens will go dry for the next while, as I try to use only watercolours, with varying levels of success!

This is a view of Sandycove from DLR Lexicon Library.
'-Rather bleak in winter, I should say.'

King's Inns

Dublin Sketchers were invited to King's Inns by SPAB Ireland and it was such a treat to have access to the indoors of this amazing James Gandon building. Of course it was overwhelming, and these sketches are not my best. I did add colour after I got home and it improved things somewhat! But I feel I will need to go there again so I can relax into my sketching. But I managed to find Ulysses connections of course!

This one was a poor drawing (I ran out of space at the top, rookie mistake), but I did have a chat with one of my fellow sketchers about Greek columns while I was drawing this and I learned a lot, like they're actually not straight lines, but curves, fatter towards the bottom. And another sketcher gave me a good tip for the base of columns - draw a loose narrow ellipse in pencil first to get the shape right before you do anything else.

'AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!'

'Parallax. I never exactly understood. There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek: parallel, parallax.' (Bloom is always interested in technical questions, and I thought this one quite fitting)

This is a view of the main dining hall, which is also used for weddings!

'Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year sober as a judge.' (Bloom often thinks about the damage done by excessive alcohol on the families of the men who drink too much. Interesting, to me that is, that my main preoccupation throughout is more with Bloom than Stephen Dedalus. It's just that I don't find Dedalus that interesting, maybe?)

This is the upstairs lounge, where apparently the judges retire after their meal!

'Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs.'

Scones

I don't often have scones, and this one wasn't particularly good, a bit dry to be honest. But it looked good for sketching. I have to say that reading this line from Ulysses makes me want to bake my own and eat it hot (but I would have to buy butter, which we don't normally keep in the house).

'Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.'

Grafton Street

A bit chaotic. I tried to portray people in different planes, the ones near me, and the ones on the other side of the street. Failed miserably. I should have placed heads and feet first, and then I should have used less detail and less colours in the background. Ah well.

Adding a few Japanese stickers made me happy, and yes, there was one very tall young man that went by!

I had painted the Brown Thomas windows red before I found this quote in Ulysses, I swear!

'He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. '

Motorbike

'... hes mad on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels...'

No motorbike mentioned in Ulysses, clearly, but bicycles do appear, and I really need to start practising bicycles for Amsterdam. Not riding a bike, but drawing them, just in case you were wondering!

Soup

I've been thinking about food a lot lately. That is not my normal mode. But I am one of the Dublin Sketchers whose sketchbooks will be in the Olivier Cornet Gallery over the Bloomsday weekend (15-16 June) for the Olives, Oysters and Oranges exhibition. So any time I get a chance, I sketch my food. Which is basically any time I'm on my own for a meal, which is not very often. And it's not like I'm eating really exciting stuff. But it's about the drawing, not the food itself, isn't it? Although I have to say that the tomato and basil soup was lovely.

'They say they used to give pauper children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome.'

An interesting quote from Ulysses, about the connection between food and religion, and Leopold Bloom's thoughts about poverty and famine, and also how Jews were converted and absorbed through Irish society. I do know some people with very Jewish names who have been Catholics for a few generations. I wonder why their ancestors converted?

There are lots of events taking place for the Bloomsday Festival. Do check the website and find an event for you. There's a lot to choose from!

Harold's Cross Festival

I didn't get much time to sketch last weekend at the Harold's Cross festival, as I spent a bit of time at our Dublin Sketchers exhibition. But I did manage to fit in this view of the fun and games in the park! And now, back into full Bloomsday mode!

' Throwing them up in the air to catch them. I’ll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off. Poor kids!'

Life Drawing - Anuta

My second life drawing session of the week - with Anuta who was standing in for someone else. She's such a pro it's always a pleasure to draw and paint her!

Most times, the initial short poses are really just a warm-up to the second half of the evening, when we move to 10- and 15-minute poses. My favourite is often the last pose of the evening, when the model lets her haird down (literally) and uses a prop or costume. I did this one in direct watercolour, only using a watercolour pencil to hint at the chair and reinforce some of the creases and patterns in the dress.

I'll spare you the one-minute poses, but here are a few 5- and 10-minutes. Interestingly, the fives are better than the ten I think. It's a balance between having enough time to get the shapes and proportions and having too much time to start doubting myself!!

People on the Luas

In an effort to fit in more people drawing into my life, I am planning to bring a little sketchbook with me any time I'm on public transport and draw people in transit. Most people are absorbed in conversation or social media, plus there are urban sketchers around the world who have been doing this for years, so I can do it too! Despite the fact that the little sketchbook I have chosen for this has an orange cover and it may not be easy to work discreetly!! I haven't been entirely successful in this new endeavour, due to my own doubts in my abilities to draw people, and also the fact that the tram is so busy most times that I end up standing most of the way, but here is one set of sketches I did manage to draw:

Life Drawing - Cindy

I didn't have much time for art last week, but I did go to two life drawing sessions, to make up for the two weeks I had missed! I was a little bit apprehensive, feeling that I would need time to get back into the flow of drawing. And yes, while a few of the drawings were painful, I did eventually get into the zone and started enjoying myself.
Cindy is statuesque and it was wonderful to have time for a longer pose (a total of 70 minutes).

Here are a few of the shorter poses:

Gelli prints

It's a while since I did any Gelli printing. But I was quite busy and that was a good way to fit a little bit of art into my days! I worked with premade stencils and it was great fun. I had forgotten how relaxing Gelli printing is!

Capel Street

On the same day Dublin Sketchers went to 14 Henrietta Street, we also sketched in the Capel Street area. It was a long day. So I needed food. Blas at the Chocolate Factory on Kings Inns Street had the perfect lunch for me - a vegetarian Irish breakfast. And plenty of inspiration for my Bloomsday 2019 Sketching!

Inside Blas. I miscounted the number of panes in the window, but you wouldn't really notice, would you?
'—One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down, on the tables in cafés. To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment’s hesitation, saying straight off:
—To sweep the floor in the morning.'

I tried to sketch it from memory (I like my food hot, well not too hot, so I rarely sketch my dinner!) with a pencil and it wasn't pretty. But when I got home, I added a dash of colour and everything worked out all right.
'So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast.'

Another sketcher had found a great spot to sketch on Capel Street - towards the top, across from the Black Sheep pub there is a business with a railing in front of it where you can sit down in peace without disturbing any of the passersby - good on a Sunday anyway). This was my last sketch of the day. I was pretty tired at this point, but also energised and I did this sketch in no time - a quick line drawing from right to left (and I'm not left-handed but I often sketch from right to left) and loose watercolour. I was done in less than half an hour. Sometimes, you get beyond tired and the most expressive sketches can appear on the page like magic!
'Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy’s hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? Lingerie does it. '

14 Henrietta Street

Dublin Sketchers were invited to 14 Henrietta Street a couple of weeks back. Due to safety reasons, we were only given access to a small part of the building, which was disappointing, but we made the most of it. Since we were in the lower kitchen, I put myself in Leopold Bloom's shoes, preparing breakfast!

'Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her plate full. Right. '

And then I went outside and tried to sketch the building itself - dark bricks and dark window frames. My watercolour went a bit heavy, but I enjoyed drawing the bricks after I got home later that day.

'All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas, creaking beds.
—Jack, love!
—Darling!
—Kiss me, Reggy!
—My boy!
—Love!
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. ' (and yes, I even managed to sneak in a food connection here!!)