Thinking back to India

Fatehpur Sikri, Near Agra India November 2011, Winner of the 2012 KRob competition for Best Travel Sketch

Floating marigolds, hotel in Jaipur

Quick scenes out the window of the very bumpy car ride in Rajasthan.

Sunrise over the Ganga from the guest house rooftop at breakfast.

Ghats in Varanasi, siting next to young Laltu (in sketch) who was selling flowers.

           As I get ready to embark on another travel adventure, I'm thinking back to what started it all:  a trip to India and Nepal in October/November 2011 with my friend Nancy Haft.  Nancy was going to see Buddhist sights in northern India and into Nepal and realized she also wanted to see things like the Taj Mahal (pronounced Meh-hel in India), so she asked me to come along.  We spent months planning every detail of the trip.  

Then, for over three weeks, we toured Northern India and Kathmandu, Nepal--it was an adventure of a lifetime... Delhi, Allahabad (where my parents lived right before I was born), Varanasi (the holiest city in India), Kathmandu, then Rajasthan to Udaipur, Jodhpur, the Pushkar Camel Fair (now, that was wild...ask me sometime about 5-legged cows), to Jaipur, then ending up at Agra to see the breathtakingly beautiful Taj Mahal.  As an architect, I really expected the Taj to be a Disneyland sort of experience, but in reality, it is utterly sublime. It floats, and I think it's because of the quality of the marble itself--translucent so light passes through it, polished so it is reflective, but the magic is in all the quartz peppered throughout the stone which refracts the light in all directions, making the entire beautifully proportioned  building look ethereal and other-worldly.

Sketching in India is particularly challenging, as I expected it would be.  As soon as people see you open a sketchbook, they come running--literally running--to watch.  Sometimes this would be a crowd of only 5 or 6, and in other places, it grew to be 20 or so.  This made it somewhat hard to take the time to pull out paints and work, so often I resorted to only pencil sketches which were fast.  People were curious, often sitting cheek to cheek, poking my pencil, lifting the corner of the sketchbook pages to try and get a peek.  I got used to it after a while.  The top sketch done at Fatehpur Sikri outside of Agra was the exception, as we found a place up high with no onlookers, and I was able to sit and sketch for a good 45 minutes. That sketch is the one that was awarded the 2012 KRob for best travel sketch (the first time this category has been awarded).

As I look back at these sketches--and many more, as I filled two Moleskine sketch books--I can feel the heat of the sun, hear the din of scooter horns and birds and crowds of people, remember the vivid colors and interesting things at every turn...I'd go back to India or Nepal in a heartbeat.

To get a better look at the sketches, just click on the image.

Quite a week...

The University of Texas at Austin, my 
wonderful alma mater, was kind enough 
to include a profile of me in their recently
published Spring 2013
School of Architecture Magazine, 
PLATFORM.  It's a great magazine, 
this issue is on Poetics of Building. 

Thanks to Amy Maverick Crossette 
for the write up and to editor Coleman
Coker.

Below is the link to the magazine, 
you can read about my adventures 
on page 32.

http://issuu.com/utsoa/docs/platform_poeticsmode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fsoa.utexas.edu%2Fissuu%2FbasicGrey%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true&logo=http%3A%2F%2Fsoa.utexas.edu%2Fimages%2Fnewlogo%2FUTSOA_logo_inverted_200.png&logoOffsetX=0&logoOffsetY=0

Northwest Watercolor Society show opens this week

Toward Yakima 2013

This Thursday, April 25, from 6:30-8pm,

the Northwest Watercolor Society's Open International Exhibition opens.

I am honored to have had a painting selected for this show, now my 3rd, so I finally qualify to become a signature member!

The show will be open from April 15 to May 31 at the Mercer View Gallery, 8236 SE 24th St., Mercer Island, WA 98040

The work that was accepted in the show is one of a series of landscapes I am painting, all based on snapshots from moving cars or trains.  I love that line in the distance along the horizon.

This one I call Toward Yakima, and it is for sale in case anyone is interested!

Along the San Antonio Riverwalk

I just got back last Wednesday from San Antonio, Texas where I was visiting my mom and nursing a very, very bad cold that left me dragging my feet everywhere.  
Finally mustered up some energy and headed down to the beautiful, lush, San Antonio Riverwalk to sketch.  My friend Pam (we've known each other since nursery school!!) sat next to me and did crochet while I drew.

The long sketch is the Arneson River Theater at the heart of the old Riverwalk.  The steel umbrellas were sketched duringlunch outdoors at La Gloria, a great mexican restaurant in the Pearl, part of the new Riverwalk extension.  Was so nice to sit outside....

I'm starting to gear up with this blog in preparation for heading to Paris in less than a month, on May 14.  Can't wait to get there to draw and paint every day--the Gabriel Prize is a wonderful fellowship--then head to Italy for the Civita workshop (there are still open spots if anyone is interested), then to Barcelona for the Urban Sketchers Symposium.  All so exciting, I can hardly believe this great good fortune.

Please join me on this amazing trip via this blog--this will be my online journal and letters home via sketches, photos, and notes.  Merci! Grazie! Gracias!

Sketching Workshop in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy! Sign up now!

This summer, I'll take a break from Paris to teach an architectural perspective sketching workshop in the amazing town of Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy...an ancient pedestrian-only hill town about 60 miles north of Rome.  Planned together with NIAUSI, the Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in Italy, we will have the opportunity to stay in the organization's beautifully restored, stone facilities in Civita.

The workshop promises to be amazing, and if you have ever wanted to really LEARN perspective, this is your opportunity! We will be sketching the charming streets, piazzas and buildings of Civita, the farmer's market in Bagnoregio, the hills and orchards in the valley below, dining al fresco in the garden, and more.  We'll cover perspective, pencil and pen sketching, and watercolor (I recently qualified to become a signature member of the Northwest Watercolor Society).  

And because this is the first year we are offering this event, it will be fairly short, very reasonably priced, and the group will be very small, 5-7 people with lots of one-on-one instruction.

If you'd like more information on me and my work, please go to www.stephaniebower.com and click on the links.

For info on the Civita Workshop including itinerary and costs, go to www.stephaniebower.com and click on Civita Workshop.
You can also contact me directly at stbower@comcast.net

For more information on the beautiful NIAUSI facilities in Italy, go to www.niausi.org

To see what Rick Steves says about Civita, http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/destinations/italy/civitabd.htm

Be sure to sign up soon!!  Space is limited!

Welcome to Drawing Perspectives

Thank you for checking out my new blog, Drawing Perspectives!  On this blog, I hope to post my perspectives on sketching, painting, teaching, as well as how-to's on drawing and watercolor, travel photos, and finding that illusive vanishing point... 

Where could this be?  It is even more stunning in person.

I'm Stephanie Bower, and I live and work in Seattle, Washington.  I've been an architect and architectural illustrator for 25 years or so, both here in Seattle and before that in New York City. I've been traveling and sketching for a long time! I've also taught perspective sketching for many years at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, briefly at the University of Washington (thank you, Frank Ching, for that opportunity!), and currently in the Design Department at Cornish College of the Arts.  As hand drawing disappears from the practice of architecture, I feel it is more important than ever to make sure the ability to draw stays alive and well in the profession.

Sketching attracts crowds in Kathmandu, Nepal, November 2011.

I have the great good fortune to have won an award, The Gabriel Prize, which will allow me to spend 3 months in Paris this summer, sketching and painting architecture and landscape every day--quite literally a dream come true.  This blog will be my online diary as I explore Paris, travel to Italy to teach a sketching workshop, and to Barcelona to participate in the Urban Sketcher's Symposium in July.

Thanks, and I hope you will stay tuned!

+  For more information on architectural illustration work, go to www.stephaniebower.com 
+  For more information or to sign up for the Civita Sketching Workshop 2013, go to www.stephaniebower.com and click on the link.
+  To view blog posts as a correspondent for Seattle Urban Sketchers, go to www.seattle.urbansketchers.org
+  To view a library of field and travel sketches, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/83075812@N07/
+  To view information about the Gabriel Prize, go to 
http://www.gabrielprize.org/
+  To view information on the KRob Architectural Delineation Competition that is now on display at the Dallas AIA, go to 
http://krobarch.com/winners.asp?winner_year=2012