I was in the Cimetero Acottolico, otherwise known as the "Protestant Cemetery." This is where you would have been buried if you happened to die in Rome and you weren't Catholic. So it's quite a who's-who of foreigners who lived in Rome - there are Keats and Shelley, Antonio Gramsci, Hendrik Christian Andersen, Chauncey Ives, Gottfried Semper, Gregory Corso ... the list is long and the funerary monuments greatly varied. But perhaps my single favorite tomb there is the "Angel of Grief," the final work of American sculptor William Wetmore Story, carved for his wife, Emelyn. There are numerous other versions of this sculpture but, as far as I know, this was the first. It's such a dynamic sculpture that it's difficult to find the best point of view for a sketch, but there's something about the angel's drooping hand that I found appealingly expressive. Also, the shadows were most interesting on this side at this particular time of day. The sketch needed some background, if only to give form to the upper part of the wing, but I'm glad I made the decision not to get into drawing plants and other tombs - I figured these might distract from the sculpture. It was really a nice drawing experience - quiet, peaceful, contemplative - and I look forward to drawing at this location again.
Here we worked on an exercise - one I learned from my sketching teacher almost 30 years ago - for finding the form of this 'simple' little building. In practice, these sorts of subjects - ones that appear simple on first glance - often create the most trouble. We typically try to draw every detail without first finding the overall form and proportion. By focusing on the elliptical forms of a circular structure seen in perspective, we can get a much better handle on the overall geometry of the subject. So I have my students draw in a continuous spiraling motion, really using their arms rather than their fingers. Perhaps 10 or 15 minutes of this exercise usually leads to more accurate proportions and less focus on detail.
We ended the day with a sketch of the equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Perhaps the ultimate challenge in 'finding form' - at least for a group of architecture students - is to draw human and animal figures. Our brains tend to over-analyze or objectify the subject, and get in the way of what our eyes are really seeing. So this was an exercise in seeing line and form, and trying NOT to draw a 'person' on a 'horse.' All in all, it was a wonderful morning of walking, sketching, learning, and enjoying yet another day in the Eternal City.
Our group from the University of Idaho made a visit to the Amalfi Coast over the weekend, staying three nights in the small town of Atrani and a day at the Greco-Roman city of Paestum. It's always a bit of a challenge coordinating travel for this trip, as I prefer to use public transportation and the rail/bus/boat schedules rarely align the way I'd like. There was only one real glitch - we went to transfer from one train to another in Napoli, and got on the train that was sitting on the designated track ... only to discover a bit later that the actual train had been sitting further down the same track, and had already left the station. Crazy. So we had to kill an hour or so waiting for the next train. In the end, not such a big deal, as the destination always renders insignificant any difficulties along the way. While I hate to give away what I feel is a bit of a secret ... Atrani is a wonderful place, and one of my favorite locations for drawing. MC Escher spent time there, which becomes obvious when you see his initial "Metamorphosis" woodcut and also consider his images of never-ending stairs and crazy perspectives.
And then there's Paestum, just a little way down the coast from Salerno, where we take the bus or boat to get to Atrani. Paestum was a Greek colony from the 5th Century BC that was subsequently made into a Roman city before falling to the Saracens in the 9th Century AD. It then lay all but undiscovered until the 18th Century when it became inspiration for English Romantic poets. Now, it is simply a magnificent place to visit, with three major Doric temples in immaculate condition. They make challenging subjects for drawing, and in this case I was trying not to get worked-up about the details and let the paint flow freely.
I'm back in Rome again, for another installment of the annual University of Idaho Architecture study abroad program I created back in 2007. It's been a little over a week, and I'll be here for a couple more months. Most of my time is spent working with students, but of course I find time to draw on my own as often as possible. I'm trying to work on my watercolor skills, working in a Moleskine A4 Folio for the most part - sometimes doing single pages and other times taking advantage of the landscape format by doing full page spreads for wide panoramas or very vertical subjects. But I'm also enjoying graphite again for the first time in a little while (last year I did relatively few drawings in pencil). Graphite doesn't have quite the visual impact as watercolor, but it's certainly quicker, easier to work with, and the focus is almost exclusively on value rather than color. More can be seen on my flickr page. It's good to be back!
I recently attended a fantastic workshop at the Fallbrook School of the Arts, in Fallbrook, California. It was taught by Thomas Schaller, who has long been one of my 'heroes' with regard to architectural illustration, and who for the past several years has turned his attention - and his formidable skills with pencil and brush - toward fine art watercolors. The workshop was titled "The Architecture of Light," which seemed to be right up my alley, so I was eager to participate. We spent four days together, mostly in the studio, watching Tom work and listening to his observations and thought process as he created a series of very instructive demonstrations. We followed each demo with our own attempts to incorporate his techniques.
There were many other techniques that I found very helpful, but I'll just mention one more. Not a 'technique' as much as an approach, I guess. It has to do with knowing when the reference (i.e., the subject or the view) has provided enough visual information, and when to stop being too much a slave to 'reality.' As Tom put it, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'at some point, you need to start listening to the painting ... what started as an interesting view is now a world unto itself in the image you are creating.' He advocated finding a 'story' that you're trying to tell, and developing both the composition and subsequent painting to most effectively tell this story - and if that means editing the components of the view, so be it. This is very different than my typical approach to sketching from observation, where I'm most often trying to be faithful to what I see ... but I found this idea of storytelling and listening to the painting to be both refreshing and challenging at the same time. 
