Villa Giulia

We started sketching class yesterday at Piazza di Spagna (aka the "Spanish Steps"), and I spent my time helping students - it's a very challenging subject. When we broke for lunch, I scooted ahead to do a sketch of the Palazzina di Pio IV, which turns the corner with a beautiful composition of engaged columns, inscribed tablets, and a fountain at the base. My students caught up and started gathering around just as I was beginning to put down the first washes. I sort of rushed it at the end, but was still happy with the result.

Next we walked down the street to the Villa Giulia, built for Julius III in 1550-55, and designed be Vignola, Vasari, and Ammannati ... "with some help from Michelangelo," or so says my guidebook. It contains the national museum of Etruscan antiquities - though I suppose it's redundant to say "Etruscan antiquities," because, if it was made by Etruscans, then it must be ancient. The museum is very interesting, but the villa is really fascinating. The organization of the plan and the way the nymphaeum drops in section ... it's a sequence of spaces that's impossible to capture in one or two perspectives, so I opted for a plan/section/paraline combination. It was a great challenge! 

Rome Sketchcrawl

I only managed to make it for about 30 minutes at the Rome Sketchcrawl this past Saturday ... I was busy welcoming the new group of students. It would have been nice to have more time and meet more of the local sketchers, but hopefully next time. I did get a chance to do a quick watercolor of the Lateran Obelisk - the largest in the world. It was originally carved in the 15th century BC, then brought to Rome in 367 AD to be placed in the Circus Maximus. It was rediscovered in 1587, and re-erected by Domenico Fontana in 1588 (that's a brief summary of the text at the bottom of the sketch). If I'd had more time, I would have added the buildings that were in the near-distance behind the obelisk, but I actually like the way this turned out ... it gives much stronger emphasis to the obelisk itself. It's good to be back in Rome, lots to draw! 

A Visit to Clarkston

I was invited to give an informal talk by the Palouse Watercolor Socius today, down in Clarkston, WA, which is about 45 minutes south of Moscow. It was a nice group of folks, and we had fun talking about my sketchbooks and my involvement with Urban Sketchers. After about an hour of discussion, we headed out to do a little sketching nearby. I took a stab at an ink drawing, but my fountain pen was running low (and I remembered that this was a group focused on watercolor!) so some quick washes saved this sketch of a pretty house on 7th Street.




After some more talk and a little critique, we said our goodbyes and I started heading back home. Driving along the Clearwater River, this rail bridge caught my eye, so I pulled over. There's something special about old steel bridges like this ... the rusty color, the stark values, the simple structure, the obvious mechanics of how these things work. And when they happen to be surrounded by green/golden hills like this one is, on a beautiful sunny day ... it makes for an irresistible sketching subject.

34th Worldwide SketchCrawl

Had a nice visit with one of my students as we sketched in a couple of coffee shops here in Moscow. After a week of crazy winter weather, and way too much shoveling of snow and slush, it was fun to relax and draw a little. We were both trying out our new Moleskine A4 watercolor sketchbooks. The first one here was done with a Copic Multiliner SP pen, "Wine" is the name of the color. The second is watercolor over some graphite. I'm not too happy with the scans, so I might need to re-scan or photograph these at some point. Hope everyone around the world had another great SketchCrawl, I look forward to seeing all the results!

A Few Landscapes

I've been neglecting my duties as a 'blogger' for a while, so I'm feeling the need to put something up, if only to assuage my sense of guilt. Back in August, I was on a vacation with my family in Wisconsin, and managed to do a couple quick sketches in the Moleskine. It was so hot that day, now that I remember it. It's cold in Moscow at this moment, so looking at these sketches takes me back to the sweat and the sunburn I experienced while sketching - especially during the Boathouse sketch, my exposed right arm and leg got fried.

It's the price you sometimes have to pay when you're committed to Sketching on Location. (btw, I'm currently trying to write a book by that title, which is the primary reason I haven't been posting much lately.) This second sketch was done at the Lawsonia Golf Course ... but I thought it was such a quintessentially "Wisconsin" scene that I omitted any golf-related bric-a-brac.

In late September, I took part in a plein air painting competition. We had three days to get out and about and produce as many as three entries for the competition. I only did two, and neither was recognized in the competition, but I was very happy with my efforts. Landscapes are fun, and these are larger than what I usually do - the largest format I typically use is 9" x 12" and these two are 12" x 16" - so it was a good change of pace. The first is a barn I found out near our little rinky-dink airport. The odd radiant pattern in the sky was unintentional ... it was the result of the paper buckling when I applied the wash ... but I kinda like it.

The other painting was done at the University of Idaho Arboretum, one of my favorite views in this town - and there are lots of beautiful views around here, so that's saying something. This painting was just selected by the Dean of our College to go on the college holiday card ... so even though I came away from the plein air competition empty-handed, I ended up with a nice consolation prize.

Making a Drawing

I know it's been a while since I've posted, but to say I've been busy is an understatement. And I know this isn't necessarily in line with the theme of a "sketch" blog. But I'm starting work on a book project, and part of that project will involve making some drawings. Not sketching, but making drawings. There's a big difference. But I didn't want to dive right in and start making drawings for the book. I have a LOT of writing to do before I know just what drawings I'll need to make.  

So I thought I'd begin with something unrelated, but still useful. Something to break the ice and get me back into making drawings. I'll be leading a field trip to Portland soon, and I've always wanted to put together a map of downtown that works with the walking tours I typically do for our third-year design studio. 

So that's what I'm working on in these pics. It might turn into an underlay for a watercolor drawing ... green for the parks, some sorta blue for the river, and varying greys for the urban fabric. Then I would scan it and add text digitally ... street names and keynotes for important buildings. That's the plan, anyway. For now, it's just really enjoyable to drink a beer or two and get wrapped up in the making of a drawing.

Watercolor Palette

I'm currently on vacation in Wisconsin, but I've been feeling guilty about my lack of blog posts, and it happens to be raining a bit today, so here I am. So much has happened since the last time I posted, and I'd like to get back in the groove. I want to do a few posts to recap my last few weeks in Rome and also the USK Symposium in Lisbon, but I've had so many fantastic sketching-related experiences recently, it's hard to think of a place to start. 

So how about a quick post about my watercolor palette? This is proof that I was busy sketching. I went to Rome with a full palette, and didn't bother to bring my tubes of paint along. Toward the end of the study program, I was running very low on several colors, but especially the blues, and had to buy a small tube just to get through the rest of the summer. I always use M.Graham colors, which are the best I have ever tried, but this brand wasn't readily available in Rome, so I had to settle for a tube of Winsor & Newton French Ultramarine (that's what you can see in the third pan from the left). When I finally got home after the symposium, I cleaned up the palette and put some fresh blobs of color in the pans. I like a clean palette, in case you couldn't tell.

Left to Right, the colors are:

Pyrrol Red

Alizarin Crimson

Ultramarine Blue

Cerulean Blue

Prussian Blue

Hooker's Green

Cadmium Yellow Light

Gamboge

Yellow Ochre

Raw Sienna

Burnt Sienna

Sepia

Video!

My son, Will, shot this video the other day here in Rome. It was his first time behind the camera, and I think he did a great job. He and his brother, Sam, also shot some video of another sketch, but I haven't had a chance to edit that one yet. The music is from a duo I used to play in - we were "The Jake Brakes" for a while, and then we called ourselves "Broken Homestead" (the other half of the duo passed away quite recently, so this is for Joe!). I'm also planning to upload these clips to the Urban Sketchers Vimeo page, where you can find several of of us in action.

Sketching After Morning Tours

I've tried to get in the habit of sketching after our morning tours. We tend to do lengthy walking tours (usually 3+ hours) in the morning when it's relatively cool and we're all relatively well-rested. At the end of the tours, we're often in some part of town that I might not visit otherwise. And, at the end of the tours, I'm usually very eager to stop walking or standing and just sit somewhere for a little while. All this creates ideal conditions for sketching, and shown here are a couple efforts that came directly from these situations. The first is one of the 13 obelisks currently standing in Rome. This particular one is in the Villa Celimontana, and it's just the top third that's actually a chunk of an obelisk, sitting on a granite shaft below. This one is from the Temple of Isis (one of a pair with the obelisk in Piazza della Rotonda), and is the smallest obelisk in Rome. It was nice to take my time with this sketch ... for some reason I've been shying away from watercolor in favor of pencil sketches, but this one helped to break the ice a little.

This sketch is from a bus stop adjacent to Piazza Venezia. It's a rather chaotic part of town, so it had never really appealed to me as a sketch subject before. But it seemed like a nice spot to sit, rest my feet, and watch Rome swirl around me. Lots going on in this drawing, so it was a struggle to avoid too much detail.

Next up ... a couple watercolors from Ostia Antica.

Sketching with Luc

Last week I was able to meet up and sketch with my friend Luciano Cisi here in Rome. Luc lives a little distance outside the city, so it was very kind of him to fight the traffic and drive into town to meet me at the Campidoglio. We sketched there for a little while, until it seemed that the piazza was being overrun by polizia and carabinieri who were apparently preparing to greet some sort of protest march. There are interesting political changes happening here in Italy at the moment ... party politics in the wake of the ongoing Berlusconi drama, as well as a burgeoning anti-nuke movement and an effort to prevent the privitization of public water supplies. Good reasons to get out into the streets, but Luc and I were more interested in doing some sketching.

After a short break for something to drink at a nice little cafe adjacent to the Tarpeian Rock, we headed over to Santa Maria in Cosmedin for one more drawing before Luc had to drive back to Latina. We were interrupted several times by tourists looking for directions ... often to places that were clear across the city. But we managed to finish up before too long, and said our goodbyes until next time - hopefully just a little later this summer!