Urban Sketching In Galway: Going Out On A High

Wednesday 14th August

It’s the day before my annual summer urban sketching workshop in Galway City. The group meets at Sangria on Augustine Street for dinner, to say hello and introduce ourselves. To my delight, everyone is there. I know from the first ten seconds that I am going to love this little group of five sketchers. The restaurant is great, too: the food is delicious, the wait staff gracious and helpful, the tapas creative, fresh and delicious. I am looking forward to the next three days.

Thursday 15th August

St. Nicholas’ Church

The following morning we meet in Corrib Tea Rooms for coffee and debriefing. Our first location is St. Nicholas Cathedral on Market Lane, where I am hopeful the class will encounter people to sketch. In our little pre-workshop statements of goals, it has been identified as a subject some of the students are keen to gain experience with. Understandably, people can be a little nervous or self-conscious about sketching alone in public (I know I was at the start, very much so), so they’re hoping to gain in confidence as sketchers as well as in skill.

Luckily, the church is popular this morning, all the more so due to the rain outside, and there are quite a few potential subjects milling about. The class is instructed to make gestural sketches with a brush only, to capture figures quickly. I talk about the effective drawing technique I use every time I make any shape. Then we discuss the magic trick that is getting values right. This morning, in this church, it comes home to me that if you can make a really strong drawing and get your values right when you add paint or other medium, you have the sketching thing pretty much licked: most things after that come down to taste, and tweaking. Taste, when it comes down to composition and subject choice; tweaking, when it comes down to all the other little delights of making art, such as colour choices, media chosen, you name it. (I’m open to discussion on this, I haven’t throught it through fully.)

I sit with two of the students, Angela and Laura, and explain how useful a white gel pen is for fixing mistakes. There’s a pause and then someone quips, “we’re going to need a bigger gel pen” and Laura says I should make that the title of my workshop, and we laugh loudly. A visitor to the church, a tourist, admonishes us.

“This is a church!” he says crossly. “A place of joy!” I retort, but he’s right, we should be quieter. I forget sometimes. It’s not the first time I have been told to pipe down. I will try to do better.

Galway Docks

In the afternoon we are blessed with sunshine. We meet at Galway Docks and sketch the boats lined up against the quay: they are all beautiful, especially the traditional ones, and come in all shapes and sizes. A vast ship enters the port, and, most improbably, slowly does a 180º turn. It is a container ship, the biggest I have ever seen in the flesh, the men in oilskins, tiny like ants, standing on the prow peering down from their great height.

“That’ll be our gel pens,” says Angela.

Galway Docks is the perfect place to practice accurate drawing and murky green reflections. The class make beautiful sketches, capturing the very essence of Galway City, close as we are to the water, wherever you are.

Friday 16th August

It’s not warm, but it’s not raining…much. In the debriefing session, I have hyped up the beautiful swans that hang out in the Claddagh Basin in the morning. When we arrive and settle on the quayside, none is to be seen, so instead we draw the boats, trying to apply the techniques for values and reflections we’ve discussed on the previous afternoon. Then a swan arrives, and I suggest drawing her multiple times for practice. She is joined by a seal and a cormorant, and I am absolutely delighted. As a girl my wish was always to see wildlife and I think everyone is the same. We’re all bananas about wildlife, and encountering an animal in the wild: there is something eternally mystical and romantic about our fellow creatures. Well, there is to me, anyway…although that feeling doesn’t extend to seeing wild rats, sadly.

Galway Cathedral

In the afternoon we sit on the pedestrian bridge and I do a little demo of the trees: in summer, in full leaf, they’re a pretty obliging subject, when done my way, which is very literal. I am like a lab technician when it comes to sketching: whether this is a good or a bad thing, I am not sure. I guess I am always torn between asking my students to breakdown a subject and learn how to depict it, and following along with what they see. Right now, my conclusion is that if you learn a bunch of characteristics of a given subject and a technique for sketching them, and then go in to your sketch prepared to override them and draw what you see, knowing you can call on the techniques if you are getting confused, then that’s not a bad way to proceed.

After the students sketch some trees I talk a little about capturing a cloudy sky. To do this I outline the Cathedral first, then add a sky. I’m not particularly happy with the outcome of the sky, which happens from time to time, especially if I am sketching live for an audience. I get distracted! But the technique is clear, even if I don’t apply it particularly well. I hope it’s clear, anyway.

Saturday 17th August

Galway Market

The exercise here is designed to take the focus off drawing people accurately, and instead to concentrate on the sheer playfulness and fun that can be had with urban sketching. So the instruction is to eavesdrop and capture overheard conversations on the page. I draw Michael, selling oysters. I eavsedrop on Reuben, who is cooking and selling South African Boerewors sausages. I treat myself to a breakfast of three Clew Bay oysters.

It is when I want to deepen the browns in the seaweed that I realise I am down one fude pen. It’s a favourite – a brand new 55º Sailor fude – and I must have dropped it on the pedestrian bridge drawing the cathedral the day before, as the trees are drawn in brown ink, so I had it then. Oh well! I am due a loss, as I haven’t lost anything in years, despite sketching everywhere imaginable. It doesn’t turn up, but I will soon be ordering in the same pens to include in my SketchPockets, so I will replace it soon.

When I meet my sketchers at the entrance to St. Nicholas’ Church I am delighted at their offerings. They have entered fully into the spirit of fun, and I see snippets of conversation written all over their pages – artistically too, I might add. One of my students is so full of excitement that she can hardly put a sentence together. And I, in turn, cannot put into words how touched I am by this.

Then we venture into the crazy busy main street to draw some of the buskers. My theory is that you can get used to anything, including sketching in a crowd, in public…anywhere. I think my students, even the more bashful ones, are starting to get used to it. Some of the students and I squeeze into the crowd and sketch this puppeteer. I imagine him discussing what he and the puppet are going to wear each day. Obviously it’s pre-decided and laid out on their beds, one big, one tiny, each day – I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-looking!

The Long Walk

I like to finish a workshop with a sketch of the Long Walk, Galway’s iconic scene. It’s even on the logo of Urban Sketchers Galway…

The wonderful vice-president of Urban Sketchers, Ronaldo Kurita, is responsible for the houses in the design, and I am responsible for the Galway traditional hooker (more or less, Ronaldo fixed it and vectorised it for us).

Here’s what the Long Walk looks like in the flesh:

The lovely swan who graced us with her presence on Friday morning drifts back into view, with her five children in a row behind her, and her husband bringing up the rear. Or maybe he’s in front and she’s at the back, I don’t know my she-swan from my he-swan (although one of the students present is a vet and would know). There are a few juvenile seagulls on the quay wall, solid and chunky, doing their best to persuade us to feed them something with their I’m-just-a-baby cries. I put the legs of the one in the middle in the wrong place.

With an hour to go of the workshop, one of the students remarks that she’s yet to visit a Galway pub. We can’t have that, so we head back up the street to Neachtain’s on the corner of Quay Street and Cross Street. On the way we cut through the Tiny Traders market and I buy a colourful shawl. We are a little way from the market when I stop suddenly, having realised I have chosen the wrong colour. The students, all women, take it as seriously as I feel it, and insist I go back and get the one I really wanted: they say they’ll see me in the pub. This is how lovely they are.

We are amazed to get a table in the pub – it’s always packed to the rafters – but we are six, and a little cramped.A young woman at a bigger table invites us to swap for our smaller table, as she is with just one other person (her boyfriend is in the bathroom). It is such a kind gesture and the students are very touched. The family of one of them arrives – they are making this week their Irish holiday – and it is a great pleasure to sit with her sweet children and her jolly husband. Before the night is through, one of her kids has started drawing too. If she takes to it and sticks with it a little, it will bring her great comfort in the years ahead.

Adieu

…for now

We say our goodbyes. This was meant to be my last-ever Galway workshop, as I have been doing them every year, sometimes mulitple times a year, since 2016, and it’s time to let someone else take care of the logistics. But every year that I host people in our lovely little city I am freshly surprised by how wonderful the workshop attendees are. Each year I make new friends, or meet dear friends I have only known through a screen. So I must admit it’s tempting to continue. While I don’t intend to organise a workshop on my own in the future, I would be delighted to teach any group, anywhere, as long as some clever person is doing the organising. So if you feel like organising something for a group and you want a sketching teacher, do let me know – I will travel!

Urban sketching is colourful, because the built environment and its inhabitants are full of colour. It’s fun, because people are unpredictable and quirky. It will restore your faith in human nature, because the people you meet are invariably lovely. It’s mindful, because you can’t dwell on your woes when you’re trying to get a sketch right. It’s playful, because it usually stays in a sketchbook. It’s rewarding, because there’s so much to learn. It’s sociable. It’s healthy. It’s not too expensive. It’s joyful.

What are you waiting for?

Upcoming workshops

27th-29th September 2024: Artfrom art school in Dunmore East, Co. Waterford. Nature sketching. We will gather bits and pieces on our expeditions each morning, bring them back to the studio and sketch them. Link: https://www.artform.ie/courses/sketching-in-september-with-roisin-cure/

23rd-30th April 2025: Lagou Raxi country house hotel, Greece. “Concertina Sketchbooking in Ink and Watercolour”, concentrating on the beautiful villages and nature in this stunning part of the heart of the South Pelion. Dates to be confirmed (we are waiting for the flight schedule to be announced), link to be shared soon.

23rd-30th August 2025: Atelier Clos Mirabel, Pyrenees, France. “Vignettes of the Pyrenees: Sketchbook Masterclass in Ink and Watercolour”. Near Pau and Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Link: https://atelier.clos-mirabel.com/painting-holidays/vignettes-of-the-pyrenees-a-sketchbook-masterclass-in-ink-and-watercolour-with-roisin-cure

I hope to meet you at one of these!