Painting Ireland, 3

Detail, Graiguenamanagh, Sunday morning

When I was leafing through a travel guide during my planning of my trip to Ireland, I ran into the photo of the village of Graiguenamanagh, on the Barrow River valley, and I knew immediately that was a place I had to visit and paint.

I arrived there at sunset on Saturday, March 13, and got a room at an inn overlooking the river. I woke very early and opened my window to the cool morning air, the stillness of the morning prior to sunrise. The scene was so inviting that I almost caught a cold from leaning out of the window for such a long time in a t-shirt--it took some seriously hot tea to warm me up again. As soon as it was warm enough, I walked around taking photos in every direction. Then I got back to the inn, ate breakfast, picked up my painting gear and walked across the bridge to paint a view of the town in the sunlight.

Graiguenamanagh, Sunday morning, watercolor, 11x15

The resulting study is shown above. I liked the view of the stone bridge in shadow leading into the town buildings, with their interesting roofs and chimneys. I did a careful sketch in pencil, but ended up painting very fast, as it was still pretty cold, even in the late-morning sun, and I had to continue my trip before long. The water and reflections did not come out very well, so I tried to improve on them later at home, without much success.

Unlike in the previous sketches I've shown in this series, I did not use watercolor pencils on this piece, the details were added with a rigger. I used Schmincke colors on Fabriano Artistico Cold Press paper. The work was done in a hurry, but ultimately I feel I managed to capture something of the peaceful Sunday morning scene.