Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
The recent trip is quickly becoming a faded memory thanks to the wall of work that awaited my return. Looking back over these sketches helps bring it all back though. Lots of street corners feature the Virgin Mary either in sculptural form or oil paintings that are now covered with perspex or mesh to protect them. They also feature coats of arms as well, this is the enormous Medici coat of arms on a corner by the Duomo Plaza. A work of art in it's own right.
Florence was a lot of fun to draw with so much history to absorb and so much to get down on paper. I reckon you could draw there for weeks and not run out of interesting subjects. They have an interesting selection of electric cars and trucks in the city centre - you can only park in the centre if you are electric, but I ran out of time to draw those. Next time! I had to draw the Duomo though, it's simply amazing. But it's also enormous and packed with
so much marble detail that I decided to play it safe
and bite off just a small portion of it. I had a go at the
whole thing a few days later, will post this sketch soon.
so much marble detail that I decided to play it safe
and bite off just a small portion of it. I had a go at the
whole thing a few days later, will post this sketch soon.
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