Sketching along the pista #5

Cycling from Évora to Reguengos de Monsaraz, a brief refreshment stop was taken at Nossa Senhora de Machede. Life goes on at a fairly quiet pace here, and I doubt Machede has ever attracted much attention from the outside world. Yet I was captivated by the Casa do Povo, with its brilliant blue flourishes, and its striking contrast with the blood red trim of its less fancy neighbour, Snack-Bar a Lareira.

This was a brief stop, perhaps 45 minutes, so I needed to get down the essence of the scene quickly. I focused on the two buildings fronting the square (actually more of a triangle), made a lightening outline in blue coloured pencil, and then blocked in the water-coloured areas before applying grey ink and white marker-pen details. As my friend James Hobbs (@jameshobbsart) from London later observed, the buildings appear as boats bobbing in the urban landscape, tethered to their moorings by the ubiquitous Portuguese power lines. For urban sketchers, it doesn’t get much better than this!