I had one small section left in my Hahnemuhle concertina sketchbook and found a great scene to finish the book. There is an area with covered arches near the Rialto Market. One of the arches opens to the Grand Canal. The gondolas kept going down the small river across from it so I was able to to sketch the gondola activity based on a few boats that turned into that canal. I am hoping to take photos of all the paintings in this sketchbook and maybe make an iMovie. If I get it done and don't have major problems with it, I will post it here on the blog.

The Met Cloisters - Part 2

 The arches and fancy decoration were a lot to capture. I liked this view looking through the arches to other arches in the midground and then the background. I did use ballpoint pen to make the lines stand out a little...nobody from the Cloisters noticed.

I finished the above sketch with some time to spare before we were doing our show and tell, so I found a ceiling area that had potential. This was done in a gray toned Strathmore sketchbook and I added a bit of white colored pencil for highlights.

Venice 2024 - Part 8 - Arched View, Squero di San Trovaso, Ferrovia

 There are a lot of views hidden at the end of meandering streets like this one.

While I was in Venice I tried my best to post to creativespark.art and do the scavenger hunts. 

This sketch was done for one of the hunts. It is the stove in our apartment and was done on my iPad with Procreate.

The next sketch is one of my favorite places in Venice. It is the Squero di San Trovaso, a landmark 17th century boatyard that builds and services wooden gondolas. There is usually some activity going on that is fun to watch. Of course the gondola I started to sketch first (the prominent one nearly in the center) was finished. The work had been done and they carefully put in into the canal and it was gone! Luckily I had enough of the details and a photo to help me finish that gondola.

A few days before we were leaving I went over to Ferrovia (the train station) to get our tickets for the trip back from Venice to Milan. After booking the tickets I came outside and was attracted to the view across the Grand Canal and the people sitting and standing on the steps of the train station. One lady must have been really tired from her commute. She was leaning against her suitcase resting her head.

Across the Bridge to St Mark's Square

 I found some sketches of Venice that weren't loose but were in a sketchbook that I had with me.  This sketch is of a back calle behind St Mark's Square. If you go up the steps and through the arches you will find yourself in the middle of the wide-open St Mark's Square.

Arches and Arches

 Up near the Rialto  Mercado is a strip of very old buildings that are presently very popular bars. They area around the other side from this view. They all have wonderful views of the Grand Canal and the gondola station. I was attracted to the back of the bars with all the arches and shadows.

The Mighty 5

Utah is famous for its wonderful landscapes and many of them can be found in "The Mighty 5" national parks there. On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketcher's virtual event took us there. When Jerry and I were driving cross-country we drove through Zion National Park on our way to the Grand Canyon. We didn't have much time to stop...just enough to take a few photos.

When the location was announced I dove right in to the reference photos and downloaded a few from each of the parks. Then it came time to pick one park but I couldn't decide. So I did all 5 of them. Of course these are small sketches...maybe about 4 x 5 inches. I blocked out 5 fairly equal boxes on a large piece of watercolor paper and started drawing. I sketched it all out with an orange micron pen and then started painting with watercolors. I added ink, oil pastels and anything I could grab to intensify the colors of the rocks.

Here is the page as it was composed.