Música na Harmonia

Fui até à Sociedade Harmonia Eborense curtir um som...

Sketching along the pista #13

My cycling trip ended with the ride from Vila Viçosa to Estremoz. Such a wealth of sketching possibilities and on my free morning I chose to sit in Praça Luís de Camões where the surrounding buildings seemed like spectators in an amphitheatre observing Portuguese history. Just like me. Again, I tried to capture the scene using a minimum of line and colour yet extracting the maximum character.

This will be my last post until I return. 2020 maybe? 2021? It was such a joy to meet and sketch with the Évora Sketchers and it has been a pleasure to share the results. Feliz natal. Abraços a todos.

Sketching along the pista #12

Sketching alongside a colleague from the worldwide Urban Sketchers community always highlights the joy of our shared passion. Working in near silence for an hour and a half with José in Vila Viçosa produced two very contrasting works, but this is the magic of urban sketching. We discussed this alchemy later over a drink, marvelling at the individuality and vitality of our chosen pursuit.

Sevilla-based sketcher Inma Serrano (@inmaserranito), whose workshop I took at the 2018 USk Porto Symposium, has long been an inspiration for me. Here I had in mind her quirky perspective effects, and bold yet simple use of line and colour. This row of houses in Rua dos Combatents da Grande Guerra seemed ideal to produce a work of whimsy and charm. Gracias Inma, obrigado José.

Sketching along the pista #11

Sketching on the run, a hot day with many kilometres still to cycle, leads to some shortcuts. Near the township of Terena, Santuário de Nossa Senhora da Boa Nova provided an outstanding cultural monument to visit, a shady place for lunch, and a great subject for a sketch.

I experimented with different techniques for the stonework: some with a wax crayon resist, others using pen and white marker. I ran out of time to complete the sketch, so used the unfinished portion as a journal page, blocking out the space with my hieroglyphic script.

Canto ao menino

E para todos um feliz Natal!

Sketching along the pista #10

As late afternoon sun floods Monsaraz, its steep hilltop position creates deep and sometimes unexpected shadows punctuated by brilliant bursts of orange light. Part of Portugal’s charm for the urban sketcher is that there is such a range of buildings, from the palatial and pristine to the rustic and ruinous. Here, location and building combined seamlessly. I chose a building at the more derelict end of the scale, fronting the castelo, where the light and topography combined to capture the mood of the town as a whole.

I placed my sketching focus on the old doorway, and only hinted at the main streetscape with its church spires dominant in the middle distance. A restricted palette of orange, red, blue, and grey reinforced the dramatic light.

Sketching along the pista #9

I often incorporate small elements of collage into my urban sketching. But I had never made an urban sketch almost entirely of collage. Until Monsaraz, that is. The view from the hotel window looked west across the Alentejo plains, picturesquely divided into small farms, with ranges of hills in the hazy distance. I had come prepared for this moment, with a small portfolio of old coloured paper scraps to which I added some ephemera from this extraordinary hilltop town.

To cut or to tear? That is the question. I mostly chose to tear as better suiting the casual landscape patterning. Some 1860s government blue paper formed hazy sky, touched with a dry stroke of Prussian blue watercolour. A cover leaf from the mid-nineteenth century Archivo Universal: revista hebdomadaria provided distant hills. The cream frontispiece of an old book and ochre paper added just the right colour for the paddocks, while fragments of marbelled book endpapers, brown wrapping paper, and some contemporary ephemera touched on the details.