Sketches from Orvieto

I arrived in Italy in June and made my way straight to the beautiful hilltown of Orvieto, north of Rome. Across from my hotel was the amazing duomo, famous for its facade and the horizontal banding inside and out. I went a bit nuts with this sketch, as I only had 1.5 hours till my taxi would arrive, so my pencil and watercolor flew!! (I've added this sketch again at the bottom of the post so that you can click on it and see the detail--same for all these sketches!)

I walked around town and did 5 sketches all in the same day...I was trying out a new sketchbook, the 7"x10" Pentalic AquaJournal--the paper I knew well but the format and size were totally new to me. It occurred to me that I might not have enough pages in the sketchbook to last for 6 weeks of travel, so I decided to do 2 images per page...in the end, it became a format I would repeat everywhere I went, as I loved being able to see sketches side by side.

Below are my 5 sketches from Orvieto (makes me think I should always sketch with jet lag!)  

To the left is my favorite of the sequence sketches, done late in the day in the heat...

For me, Urban Sketching is about capturing my experiences on paper and learning about what I see through the act of drawing and painting...so all these are sketched and painted on location.

 This was the view from my hotel window!

The taxi arrived on time, and I headed off to Civita for the workshop! (Click on the duomo interior sketch to see the detail...)