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.

 

Venice 2024 - Part 3 - Piazza, Near Home, La Salute, Across the Canal

 One morning I found a piazza that I hadn't been to before. They were having some sort of reunion and by the time I finished this sketch there were a lot of people around, many with small children. When I started it was rather quiet.

I didn't have much time for a sketch this particular morning because I was meeting my brother and sister-in-law. They were leaving on a cruise of the Adriatic the following day. I found a spot near the apartment and did a quick, direct watercolor painting in a small sketchbook.

One of my favorite churches in Venice is La Salute, or actually Santa Maria della Salute. It is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica located at the Punta della Dogana in the Dorsoduro sestiere. Both last year and this year the exterior is covered for construction work. However the exterior work doesn't diminish the beautiful interior. It was starting to drizzle so I thought I made a wise selection for sketching. I sat on a bench and sketched a portion of the ornate decorations over one of the altars. 

I seem to have timed things right because as I was finishing up services were starting at that altar, so I enjoyed the choir and the prayers for a while.

Another day I returned to the same area. I walked down along the Punta della Dogana and sketched the view across the Grand Canal. In the background of the sketch is the San Marco Basillica. (This way I didn't have to sketch the whole thing. lol) This spot on the canal is busy with a vaporetto stop with boats coming and going, many gondolas taking people for rides, and a few Alilaguna boats that travel in the Venetian lagoon taking people to their hotels or to some of the other islands. I used artistic license to leave out a lot of the activity going on there.

Peperoncino

I've been going through some of my photos and trying to organize them in some reasonable way...and get some of them off my computer. I came across this photo of peperoncino picante that I took at the Rialto Market in Venice, Italy. The little, spicy peppers looked like bouquets! Much of the produce sold at the Rialto Market (at least most of the good stuff) is grown on the island of San Erasmo which is in the Venetian lagoon. I visited the island on one of my trips and walked around to see what it was like. It is known as the agricultural island in the lagoon and is quiet and peaceful. When I would buy my vegetables and fruit while we were there I tried to make sure they came from S. Erasmo.