Workshop, Day at the Villa Lante

Near the Entry to the Villa Lante's two pavilions.

I have wanted to see this place for years, ever since I studied the gardens in France with the Gabriel Prize architecture fellowship in 2013. This remarkable garden from around the mid-1500's near Civita pre-dates and likely influenced the ones I studied outside of Paris.

The fabulous lower garden.

The famous table fountain. Apparently, they really served meals on this stone table!
See the face at the end? The fountains cascade down the various levels of terraces.

So this year for the first time, as part of the workshop, we headed about 20-30 minutes drive away to spend a day in Bagnaia, near Viterbo, to sketch in the cool shade of these beautiful gardens. It was a great break from the stone of Civita, and there is wonderful perspective to sketch here.  We will do this again in next summer's Civita workshop as well!

Me and my overlay ambitious sketch of one
of the pools looking toward the lower garden.

Yikes, ellipses gone wild!! What was I thinking????

I finally got to meet the cousin of our friend Sean Cryan in Seattle, Mary Jane Cryan...she lives near here and has wonderful
books and gives guided tours as well. I brought her Etruria book home (the heaviest thing in my suitcase) and it was well worth the extra pounds through Spain and England. Fascinating, and she is a wonderful writer, like her cousin Sean. Sarah and Annie, left and right, work with Sean in Seattle...small world!

At the end of the day, we had fabulous pizza just down the street in Bagnaia...what a great day!

Workshop, Inside the Chiesa San Donato

Late June in Civita is blazing hot, so one of the ways we escape the heat is to sketch inside the Chiesa San Donato. I've done a few sketches of this lovely church on past trips, you can see the first one from 2013 in my Pentalic sketchbook below. 

The concept for this sketch above is exactly the same as for the one below...I always start with the big shapes. An advantage of this particular view what that I was also able to use that center arch as a way to determine where the elements on the far wall were located...for example, the spring line for the far arches is just about half way up the front arch.  So this makes getting shapes and proportions easier.

Here is the photo of the nave of the chiesa, and below it is the diagram I draw in the workshop to explain the concept of drawing the arches. As I always teach, we start with the shape of the space, then the VP and eye level lines, than I use this structure to fill in the basic lines that describe the space.

Pretty early on, I'll add the arches...first by drawing the rectangular bays made by the columns, then I put in the spring line where the arch starts.  You'll see I also lightly sketch in the entire ellipse, as this makes it easier to get the arch shape. Once I have all that structure in, I start filling in the sketch.

There is a lot more info on this in both my book and Craftsy classes.

Diagram sketch of the chiesa space and arches.

This is one of my all time favorite sketches!  It might be where I started doing these wide-angle views
that I love so much.

When I paint these sketches, I also approach the watercolor thinking like an architect. The first thing I'll do is paint in that pale blue (cobalt with a touch of perm. alizarin crimson) in all the openings, so that the voids appear to recede.  Next I'll use a little gray and yellow ochre to warm the walls and arches in the center nave, so that they advance in space. I'm always thinking about solids vs. voids in architecture.

And here we are at the end of the day, in front of the beautiful salmon colored Chiesa!!

More Civita Workshop...back to June!

Next installment in the Civita workshop...

Sketching in an ancient Etruscan/Roman cave...

Learning watercolor inside La Sala Grande.

Moving Outdoors to learn watercolor in the daylight!  Check out the view behind us!

Sketching wide-angle views in the Piazza San Donato, the ancient forum and still a gathering place today!

Some of the sketches from the piazza...

More in the piazza...wide angle views!

Scenes from DRAW CIVITA 2016

Yep, while I wait for Craftsy to fix all the bugs in their new website, and my new class, I'm going back to the summer to continue posting my 6 weeks of sketches in Italy, Spain, Holland, and England...starting with the workshop in Civita!!

For four years now, I've had the great good fortune to offer a 6-day perspective and watercolor workshop in the amazing, pre-Etruscan speck of a town, Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy.  This year, we had a group of nine -- a great, hard-working group of sketchers from the US (Seattle, California, Texas, Virginia, Kentucky), Norway, and the UK.

The first morning, we walked across the steep pedestrian bridge into Bagnoregio to buy groceries (Civita is so small, there is no grocery store!) We stopped for caffe lattes at Massimo's bar, but we found him behind the bar gardening in his family's amazing orto.  He kindly sent us home with bags of delicious plums from his trees!

In the afternoon, we jumped into perspective basics, and the next day, we jumped right into watercolor. Here are some of their great sketches! 

(Thanks, Patty Leighton, for some of these photos!) Thanks so much to the Civita Institute/NIAUSI, for the support and opportunity to teach in this incredible, unique place!!

So much of the fun of this workshop is the FOOD! Here we are in the shade across from Massimo's Bar enjoying
caffe lattes and cornetti con panna (Italian croissants with fresh cream...mmmmm)

We see you hiding, Paul!! That is Massimo in the white t-shirt and hat,
he makes the tastiest latte in Italy.

Demo in the tiny main street of Civita, working a watercolor sketch in stages.

Some of the sketches of the Civita main street, the first attempts at watercolor look great!

Arches can be tricky to draw, as they are not shaped like horseshoes! Here are some of the sketches
from sitting in Tony's garden and painting the arches in perspective.

WOO HOO, Discount Code!!!

Thanks to all for your patience as Craftsy has launched it's new website!  While they are still working out technical issues, they have provided us with a special 50% discount code!!

To register for "The Essentials of Sketching Architecture", 

1) Click here to get to the class home page:

        Instructor Link for "The Essentials of Sketching Architecture"

(Thanks for using this link, it is much better for instructors instead of going directly to the Craftsy website!!)

2)  Add the class to your cart.

3)  When you check out, use this code: 5c05ebb6-75f7-48a2-a384-b 
to get a 50% discount, reducing the cost to $19.99USD. It's a great deal!

This is a one-time coupon, limit one per person. 

Thank you so much for hanging in there with my unlucky timing...I hope this will work, and that you will enjoy the class!  Let me know when you are able to register, and let me know what you think of the class.  It's over 2 hours of lessons, packed with useful sketching information!

"We are experiencing technical difficulties..."

Unlucky timing, I suppose...as this past Friday, Craftsy launched a brand new total redesign of their website. And of course as these things go, my new class launched only a few days before and is now suffering a bit from that timing.

SO, the link I sent everyone now no longer works!!!  :( 

I beg you to please hold tight and wait a bit, hopefully I can send out a working discount link early this coming week.  

Those of you who bought the class before Friday night should be OK...if you are having problems viewing the class, contact Craftsy directly.  And no, my new class doesn't teach you how to make chocolates!!

"The Essentials of Sketching Architecture" is still a great class, really really packed with information...I hope you will like it!  And thank you again for your interest, and especially for your patience right about now.  

Stay tuned...