From the Vaporetto Waiting Area

 The other day we had rain all morning. Finally it seemed to have stopped. I didn’t want to take a chance on getting wet, so I walked over to the San Silvestro vaporetto stop and sat inside the covered waiting area. There are a few seat and the view was pretty good. My paper and I stayed nice and dry.

Venice 2024 - Part 6 - Burano, Rialto Market, Vegetable Stand, Florist

I can't go to Venice without spending a day in Burano. The colors of the houses just sing!!! It is about a 45 minute vaporetto ride to Burano, but first you have to get to the other side of the island where the Fondamenta Nuovo is located. I was up and out early to take the 25 minute walk to the vaporetto stop.

The colors are so bright and wonderful in Burano. I did one sketch in the morning after arriving and then spent some time walking around and taking photos. It was sad to see that there are so many more houses in disrepair than last year. Many of them look abandoned. I am sure they take a real beating being so open to the water of the lagoon, the alta aqua, and the weather.

After a fairly quick lunch I returned to painting. There was no way I would go there and only do one painting. By the time I finished this painting I just couldn't sit on my stool any more. I needed to get up and stretch my legs and get the blood flowing again. I did some wandering through the shops but bought nothing...even though the lace items are always so tempting.

The next day I headed up to the Rialto Market again. I wanted to do a double-page spread with small scenes and items from the market. It is hard to plan the composition of the page. You need to decide on what to sketch and leave space for a heading. I started with sketches of two different vegetable stands. Most of the produce always looks so good...and I like finding things that I don't see at home.

This vendor had a wonderful assortment of wild mushrooms. He attracted a lot of people.

Then I saw the florist who always sells right by the entrance to where the fish vendors are located. He always has such beautiful flowers. I liked the contrast of the softness of the flowers and the architectural structure of the arches. I showed him the sketch when it was done and he was so pleased to see it. Of course I came back to the apartment with a small bouquet of flowers that helped me add more interest to the page.

When I got home I added the signs, and a few more details like the strawberry, the melons, and some of the flowers from the bouquet. The final additions were the lemon and the clementine at the bottom of the page.

My thanks to Brenda Swenson for the beautiful pages she has done that helped inspire me to do a spread like this. I followed some of her suggestions.

 

Antica Trattoria Poste Vecie

 This restaurant, Antica Trattoria Poste Vecie catches my attention every time I see it. It is right by the Rialto Fish Market so I have passed it, and photographed it many times. I think this was the first time I sketched it. When I posted it on FB my brother (who was in Venice in Sept) posted his photo of it under my sketch. lol To make things more amusing, right before I left for Venice there had been a Hallmark movie about a woman in Venice and in the story her friend's family owns this restaurant and they show it in the movie. lol It just keeps popping up.

One of the items I needed to sketch for the scavenger hunt I was doing at the end of the trip was a child. Most of the time kids don't stay still long enough to sketch them. I was on the vaporetto sketching this scene when a woman happened to come inside carrying her child. There was still a little room on the page so I squeezed the baby in on the right side of the page (and part of the woman too).