Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 September 2019

Plaza de la Virgen, Valencia


Plaza de la Virgen, Valencia
(Black marker and coloured pencils in A5 sketchbook)

We spent three wonderful weeks in Spain in September; two in Valencia and one in Malaga. The choice of cities was in part due to the convenience of flights from and to Newcastle and, in the case of Malaga, because we'd been before and liked it.

Valencia is a beautiful city that proved really difficult for me to draw. The buildings are impressive but also very tall, so that the parts that I found most interesting were inevitably at the top and there was no way I could either get up to their height, or find a spot in crowded streets where I could easily sit and look upwards.

I did at one point consider doing some drawings of  the really exciting modernist buildings by Santiago Calatrava at the City of Arts and Sciences, but realised that, in effect, the designer had done all the work for me - everywhere I looked was a great composition!

Determined to come away from Valencia with at least one drawing in my sketchbook, I sat with a drink in the Plaza de la Virgen and drew this part of a square where all the world comes to mingle and take selfies in front of the fountain.

Friday, 13 October 2017

La Farola, Malaga


La Farola, Malaga
(0.5 marker in A5 sketchbook)

Despite an optimistic packing of several different sketchbooks, I found it as difficult as usual to get anything drawn on holiday. Two weeks in Spain and only two drawings done. Well, you either get to see lots of interesting new things or you get to stop for an hour or so and get something drawn. So it goes.

At the end of the week in Malaga, I found myself in the harbour looking at the lighthouse and suddenly feeling I could get something down on paper. And here it is.