It’s Spring: Let The Plein Air Sketching Begin!

Monday 3rd March

It’s morning and we’re heading east shortly. “We” is me, my husband Marcel, our son Paddy (23) and Reuben the terrier. The car is packed, the dog’s sleeping crate has been collapsed and thrown into the boot and I have just over half an hour to paint a birthday card for my sister-in-law, who has a birthday in a few days’ time. I see a single daffodil on my studio desk, in a beautiful vase. I sketched that vase shortly after I bought it last November, but my intention in buying it was for spring flowers…and here we are. I have a poor track record when it comes to sketching daffodils, but I don’t have much time, and the card really has to go into the post today or tomorrow, and I won’t have time to paint a card after this very minute, so I get cracking. I use a black biro (ballpoint) and for the first time I capture the lightness and delicacy of a daffodil. I like the sketch so much that I decide not to give it to my sister-in-law after all, but then I remember the extreme generosity she has always shown us, and I am shamed. Into the envelope it goes (after giving it a quick scan first, it has to be said) and I stick a couple of stamps on it.

A couple of hours later, the three of us are stomping around a shopping centre off the M50 in south Dublin (Reuben stays in the car). We are here to pick up a couple of pieces of jewellery I have bought online for Honor, our eldest: we’ll meet our youngest, Liv (20) later and the five of us will celebrate Honor’s 25th birthday together. The plan is to pick up the gifts and meet the girls for drinks and dinner and perhaps a spot of karaoke. Honor has sent me a photo of a bracelet she likes, but I don’t find it online, so I buy another bracelet I think is pretty, and some matching earrings.

The shopping centre is built over five floors, with stairs and moving ramps and lifts everywhere. The floor is a visual cacophony of every shade and pattern of marble imaginable. The shopping centre is a folly of the Celtic Tiger and makes me queasy. I go there occasionally, and I am usually torn between existential dread and a desire to check out the clothes in the shops. But if I have a low tolerance for the place, Marcel and Paddy aren’t going to cope at all, not being fans of shopping (unless it’s something for them). However we quickly find the jewellers in question, and are greeted by an friendly young assistant in a navy uniform with long blonde hair in a bun and a fringe.

The young assistant tells me she thinks my choice is excellent. I tell her I am happy she thinks so, that my daughter is very glamorous and as such has very different style to me. She starts to wrap the trinkets, and Marcel and Paddy wander away to look at the doughnut place on the other side of the corridor that’s like multicoloured marble hopscotch. I wander over to the window display. There in a little section marked “New” I see a bracelet just like the one in the photo Honor sent. I tell the assistant it’s exactly like the one in the photo my daughter sent, and I would like to take that bracelet instead. I say I didn’t see it online. She says it’s brand new and isn’t on the website yet, and tells me I can indeed purchase it, but I can only exchange online purchases, and get a refund for them, 24 hours after the order (I have ordered them about 20 hours earlier). She also tells me I can’t exchange earrings at all, for hygiene reasons. I smile and tell her that won’t apply, because I haven’t taken them away from the shop.

She looks uneasy, disappears for a second, and comes back with her manager, a tall, slim and elegant lady with a neat navy dress and black hair pulled into a high ponytail.

“It takes 24 hours to exchange the bracelet, but you can do it in any branch of our stores. And you cannot return the earrings,” says the manager in an Eastern European accent, extremely politely, “for hygiene reasons.”

“But not only have I not taken the earrings out of the shop,” I say, “I haven’t even touched them. Your assistant has yet to slide them across the counter to me. And I am here now – can’t I leave the bracelet I don’t want here, and just pay for the other and take that one away? I am happy to wait 24 hours for a refund, but I don’t want to have to make a special trip into town when I can just leave the one I don’t want with you.”

An assistant with red hair and huge jet black, drawn on eyebrows passes by. The manager asks her for her thoughts.

“You can’t exchange earrings,” says the redhead, “for hygiene reasons.”

“But I have yet to even hold the box,” I say. “All three of you assistants, here in this store, agree that I have not yet been given the earrings. I haven’t so much as touched them. You have seen this, right here in the shop.”

They look blankly at each other and say nothing.

“I think this is bonkers,” I say. The black-ponytailed manager says she is very sorry and that there is nothing she can do. She says she will see what she can do, and does a LOT of clacking on her keyboard. She turns to me.

“I have spoken with Customer Care,” she says. “You can leave the bracelet here, but you cannot exchange the earrings…”

“I know, for hygiene reasons,” I say. “That’s fine. I am sure my daughter will love the earrings too.”

I go and look at more glittering displays while they parcel up the gifts.

Marcel and Paddy turn up, beaming. They have found an offer of three doughnuts for €8.

“That’s a lot,” I say. But if the price of uncomplaining menfolk is a few doughnuts, I am happy. They ask me what’s taking so long, and I explain about the non-exchange of the earrings for hygiene reasons.

“Did you breathe on them?” says Paddy. “Or is that you’ve owned them in your heart?”

I concede, the manager prepares the receipt and says I am being given 10% off because I am a Privileged Customer now, and I thank her magnanimously in the manner of a fellow merchant, because I know how nice it feels when I have a really understanding customer. The young blonde assistant, a delicate pink flush having crept up her cheeks now, wraps the new bracelet in sea-green paper. I feel a little sorry for the flustered girl, and tell her I am happy the paper matches the ribbon I have brought up from Galway. She apologises for the fuss and explains that she’s still in training.

“Well, it’s a good thing to be presented with a little problem,” I say, “so you know what to do next time.”

As we head off Paddy says I should tell her I will go back there more often, and present her with problems, to help her with her training.

Honor loves her gifts, the dinner is great, and while we don’t find a karaoke bar that’s open on a Monday night, the two youngest of the party sing their chosen karaoke song in the back streets of Dublin and we’re all happy.

Tuesday 4th March

I am on O’Connell Street by 7.00am. It is a glorious day. We’ve stayed in town overnight, and Marcel and Paddy have set off for Galway for their respective early meetings. I cross O’Connell Bridge, head to Tara Street station and take the Dart out to Bray. The train runs along the coast all the way, and the sea is like glass this morning. The Poolbeg Towers are reflected in puddles of half tide on Sandymount Strand.

This is a sketch from my book on Dublin, called Dublin in Sketches And Stories. I haven’t done the scene justice at all. For starters, there are six red stripes, not five. And it’s much more beautiful on an early spring morning than this sketch makes out. In real life, the scene is serenissima, the water glows in the early light and the sky is a brilliant cerulean. But there you are.

When I get to Bray, I decide to walk up to my parents’ house along the Seafront. Just at the end, where the path starts to rise up the side of Bray Head, it dawns on me that I am not in any rush – everyone is probably still asleep, since it’s only 8.15 and for various reasons none of the household are rising early these days. Of course, I have my SketchPocket with me…so I lean against the sea wall and sketch what I see.

I start with the sandbank because I figure it will change first…but I don’t reckon with East Coast tides, which – it turns out – move more slowly than those on the West Coast, and I could have taken my time. Likewise the dog with the white chest standing on the edge of the sandbank: it didn’t move a muscle for far longer than I would have needed to draw it, and only do so at the very last minute.

I hear a door close behind me. A woman emerges from her front garden wearing a swimsuit and a swimming hat. There’s a towel draped over her shoulders. She wades into the water and swims. I feel envious that I cannot tolerate cold water, but tell myself that if I lived next to the coast I would force myself to acclimatise to the water. Then I remember I DO live next to the coast. I wonder if I could invent a wetsuit that makes you able to tolerate the cold water. I curse my physiology and my Raynaud’s disease which makes me feel cold nearly all the time in Ireland. But I resolve to cycle down to the shore this year and gently get used to the water so I can be like all those happy people who are always thrashing about in the sea.

After about three quarters of an hour I realise I am very cold, and the paint and ink aren’t drying anyway, so I pack it in and climb the path to my parents’ gorgeous house on the flanks of Bray Head.

I greet my sister, who has come all the way from her home in Jamaica to spend time with our parents. She is a really beautiful painter and I admire her greatly. Check her out: her name is Fiona Godfrey, and she mostly paints in oils and acrylics. She drops me off at my class in Enniskerry where I teach every Tuesday afternoon. I explain to my students that my sister paints flowers in watercolour far better than I do (notwithstanding the flukey success you see at the top of the page) and that I will ask her for her advice when she comes to pick me up in a few hours’ time.

We spend the afternoon painting daffodils, and I finish up with a demo of a trick I love for painting complex shapes. I will do a YouTube on the method soon, but basically you just lash on the shapes very roughly in paint, and then make suggestions of the design on top, when the paint has dried, with a fountain pen or a dip pen.

Towards the end of class, I get a Whatsapp message from Marcel, who is back in Galway. The new consignment of SketchPockets has just arrived. There are a lot of them, and the video he sends makes my house look like the Giant’s Causeway. Then Fiona arrives, and when I ask her to share her tips on painting daffodils, she tells the class her beautiful daffodil painting was a fluke after 20 unsuccessful attempts. We’re such a humble lot, my family (okay enough laughing!). She suggests trying purple for the shadows on the petals, as the complementary colour. I have tried that, I say, but perhaps I haven’t tried hard enough.

The next day my student Stephanie posts a sketch of her dinner ingredients. That woman never fails to inspire me, and I want to do likewise: I have started sneaking a vergetarian menu into the dinner repertoire at home, but because Marcel is a commited carnivore, I have to make the vegetarian offering delicious and irresistable. Luckily I am the woman for the job, and I will share the nicer things I make with you, through my sketching…sure why not?

That’s it for this week! I have bags to sell. To make the offering even more irresistable, I am including some extras with the bags this month – I have some A5 Watercolour Sketchbooks (both portrait and landscape), and some mini-tins to transport the ink sample safely, which you can convert into a tiny paint tin when you’ve taken the ink out, via the included 3D-printed paint-pan tray. I will also be including tracked postage this time – no more mysterious delays.

And the interests of humility, I post below another of my narcissi sketches that doesn’t capture the delicacy of the petals as I wished…but I will never give up!

See you next time, and have a lovely sketching week.