Belfast Sketches

I was in Belfast on an illustration assignment recently and took the opportunity to do a little sketching.
Kelly's pub off Royal Avenue is the real deal. No music, one armed bandits or TV to disturb the ancient arts of conversation and reading. There's an unwritten law in Ireland that if a customer is reading the paper or a novel, they shouldn't be engaged in conversation further than the niceties of small talk .. "lovely weather today", "great result for the team at the weekend" etc. Other than that the printed word remains king and must be left undisturbed. For some reason most readers gravitate towards the counter rather than the tables.


While I was in town I took a trip on the ferris wheel outside City Hall. You get a great view over the city at the top, from Cave hill out to Belfast lough and the Harland and Woolf shipyards in the distance. The wheel stopped at the top for quite a while and gave me the opportunity to quickly sketch City Hall from a height.