Category Archives: Travel

Avenida de Mayo

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Here is a photo of the view that Wilder Gómez Taipe, Edgardo Minond and I drew in Buenos Aires, followed by photos of my drawing in progress.

I wanted to show these to illustrate how my process starts with blocking out the major forms with light pen strokes. In this way, I can both compose the view and ensure that the composition will fit properly on the page. At this early stage, adjustments can still be made before committing to the drawing’s development.

Once I have the composition blocked out, I then begin to work on the major forms and fill in the details. I usually begin with foreground elements to frame the view before moving on to the focus of the drawing. At other times, I may start with the focus of the view but always rough out framing elements fairly quickly so that the drawing composition is always in the forefront.

In a few days, I will try to recap my Argentina experience.

La Plata and Buenos Aires

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We’ve had a wonderful time drawing with the students and faculty, starting in Córdoba, then in Rosario and La Plata for the congresso. This was the last drawing site in La Plata, the Casa de Gobierno, before the exhibition of the students’ work at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

Here are Wilder Gómez Taipe, Edgardo Minond and me drawing similar views of Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires yesterday.

Sadly, we leave for home today.

Córdoba

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Friday evening, after my presentation, we enjoyed a wonderful meal with UNC faculty at Juan Griego, where Horacio Burgos performed the Brazilian music of Antônio Carlos Jobim and Argentina Tangos. Music, like architecture, can express the soul of a culture.

Here are the students I drew with yesterday at Alta Gracia, one of the six Estancias established by the Jesuits around Córdoba in the 17th century. Beautiful, crisp day. While most of the students are from Córdoba and Rosario, there are also a few from Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. Tomorrow, we draw Córdoba before leaving for Rosario.

Argentina!

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Looking forward to visiting Argentina for the very first time. I will be working with Roberto Ferraris and his students from the National University of Córdoba, spending a few days sketching in and around Córdoba before traveling to Rosario on the way to Buenos Aires for the 2012 EGraFIA International Congress in La Plata, where I will be giving a presentation on drawing. Hope to be able to meet up with the UrbanSketchers group in Buenos Aires and post some work.

In the meantime, here is a drawing I did of Santa Maria, Virgen de la Altagracia, on a quiet Sunday morning before leaving for home after the recent UrbanSketchers’ symposium in Santo Domingo. Looking eastward into the morning sun, it was difficult to see the church clearly but I can still hear the singing of the assembly emanating from the Sunday morning Mass within.

Ravello and Amalfi

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The few times I had the privilege of teaching in Rome, we always scheduled a field trip to the Amalfi Coast, stopping in Cuma, Naples, and Pompeii before arriving in Amalfi and using it as a base to visit Ravello and its Villas Cimbrone and Rufolo as well as the Greek site of Paestum further down the coast.

In 2000, we were able to stay in placid Ravello at the Hotel Parsifal, a former monastery built in 1288 on the edge of town. This is a view of my corner room and terrace, which overlooked the Amalfi Coast and the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The other times we stayed at the Hotel Lidomare in the coastal town of Amalfi, just off the main piazza from which one sees this view of the Duomo. A broad stairway leads up to a striped marble and stone entrance arcade, surmounted by a pedimented facade with a mosaic tympanum. Off to the left is a Romanesque bell tower and tiled cupola typical of the area. I simply outlined the foreground and surrounding structures to contrast with the ornamentation of the cathedral.

While the drawing appears to be very detailed, this enlarged portion shows that drawing has the unique ability to suggest without having to exactly reproduce what a photograph might capture. As I wrote a few months ago, this is the magic of hand drawing—”to suggest to the mind’s eye a scene that we recognize. The whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts.”

Drawing on Location

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I’m reposting something from early 2010 that is no longer on my Facebook page…

Drawing from a photograph is very much different from drawing on location, from direct observation. A photograph captures a moment in time and reflects the processing that flattens out three-dimensional data onto a two-dimensional surface. Drawing on location takes longer to execute and involves our senses, especially that of active seeing. And like a conversation, we do not know precisely where the drawing process will lead. Even though we may have an objective in mind when we begin to draw, the sketch itself takes on a life of its own as it evolves on paper and we have to be open to the possibilities the emerging image suggests.

To illustrate, here are three drawings of the Pantheon in Rome. On almost everyone’s favorites list, the Pantheon is difficult to pass by without stopping to admire it, both from within and from the Piazza della Rotonda. The drawings, done in 2000 and 2003 illustrate similar viewpoints but different approaches to the same subject portrayed in the photo.

Gaira Café

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During the recent conference in Bogotá, we went to the Gaira Café Cumbia House owned by Grammy Award winning Colombian singer, composer, and actor Carlos Vives and his brother Guillermo. Offering typical Colombian food, drink by the bottle, and live music, the place was packed on a Thursday night with people dining, drinking, and dancing in the aisles.

This is a view from our balcony overlooking the stage where the house band played traditional Vallenato and Cumbia music perhaps interpreted in a modern way.

Local color, local music, local dance. Check out <http://wn.com/gaira_cafe_cumbia_house>.

Bogotá, Colombia II

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My wife and I had a wonderful time visiting the dynamic city of Bogotá; meeting conference contributors from Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Canada; and enjoying the warm hospitality of the faculty and students of the Universidad Piloto de Colombia.

While touring the city and the surrounding countryside with the group in a bus, it was difficult to stop for any length of time to draw but I did manage to sketch a few scenes. This first view shows what is possible even if you only have a few minutes to draw. While the bus dropped us off on one corner of the central square in Zipaquirá and drove around to pick us up in the opposite corner, I managed to quickly sketch this view of the cathedral, noting the way the slope of the square was integrated by mounding the brick pavement around the palm trees.

After a tour of the Catedral de Sal and a quick run through Zipaquirá, we drove to the historic Hacienda San Cayetano for a BBQ lunch. This is the courtyard of the hacienda, where a local Colombian noted that we unfortunately transport forms and traditions that are not compatible with the local climate. In this case, the water feature of the courtyard that worked in warmer, dryer climates wasn’t quite as effective in the humid conditions of the high plateau on which Bogotá is located.

A few days is never enough time to fully understand the culture of a place and this is even more true when visiting a country as diverse as Colombia but I hope to return again in the future.

Bogotá, Colombia

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Leaving Monday for Bogotá, where I will be attending the International Seminar of Architecture hosted by the Universidad Piloto de Colombia and leading a couple of workshops on representation. I’m excited about experiencing Bogotá, working with the students, and doing some sketching myself.

In the meantime, here are a couple of sketches I did the last time I was in Colombia, in 2010, attending a conference on methods for teaching beginning design students held at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the beautiful hilltown of Manizales. The first is of Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción, which fronts on Parque Caldas, with the statue of Francisco José de Caldas in the foreground. Caldas was a naturalist and geographer who was executed by the Spanish when Colombia (New Granada) was struggling for independence.

The second sketch is a fragment of a 50-ton bronze sculpture situated above Manizales in the neighborhood of Chipre. The monument pays homage to those who settled the region and founded Manizales. I tried to capture the struggle of the settlers, captured so eloquently by Luis Guillermo Arias, with a simple line drawing.

Pilgrimage Stamps

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In my Japan sketchbooks, my favorite page contains neither personal notes nor drawings but rather a pilgrimage “stamp” from Kiyomizu-dera, a Buddhist temple and UNESCO World Heritage site in Kyoto. It was and still is customary for pilgrims in Japan to collect these stamps in a book from each Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine visited. While some temples may only give stamps, at others a temple priest will hand-draw the temple’s “signature” in the pilgrim’s book for a small fee, as was done here. Beautiful calligraphy, artfully composed.