Four Views of the Piazza San Donato

I've been spending lots of time in Civita trying to learn about its architectural history. Lots of books, including some I stumble through in Italian, lots of walking around, and a fair amount of sketching (although I need to do more). 

The main piazza here was an Etruscan then Roman forum nearly 3000 years ago, and it is still the heart of all the activity in this tiny town.  Tonight, there is a jazz concert here, and the entire town and visitors will turn out in the piazza.

I decided to do a series of wide angle drawings of this ancient space, with notes that would describe some of the buildings whose history I was learning about.  Here are four images of the Piazza San Donato, one view in each direction, turning counter clock-wise. My favorite is the last one.  I hope to do more project drawings in this same format.

And you can see how I eventually figured out the color palette, including shadows and shade-- a lot more gray than I expected! And I switched from Burnt Sienna to Quinacridone Burnt Orange for the glow...

Looking East toward the Chiesa San Donato

Looking North toward the medieval Priest's House and prison

Looking West toward the medieval house turned Town Hall in the Renaissance.

Looking South toward the grand Palazzo Alemanni

Working...

Yikes, with the internet down a lot, I seem to have gotten out of the habit of posting to this blog!  For shame...now it is working, so I'll start up again.

The weather has gone from very hot to very unusually wet and COLD--as I put on my fleece jacket for the first time today, it felt more like early October instead of the end of July, and the valleys surrounding Civita are lush and green...very strange, especially since it's nearing 90 degrees in Seattle!?!

But at least the weather has been conducive to working indoors and spending a lot of time researching my project: to create an illustrated walking guide to the town.  I am learning A LOT about the history of this place, I'm pretty much ready to start conducting guided tours :)
I also seem to have gone into quite a few of the Etruscan caves of late, and I'm thinking more and more that many or most of them were actually tombs, as creepy as that feels at times since they run 2 and 3 levels below many of the houses here.  The temperature drops as you go further down, with the bottom-most caves staying a consistent 17degreesC, at least I think that's what I heard...basically, perfect for storing wine.

Here also is a shot of the map I'm using for notes for the project, and I also have many pages of notes on my computer, and soon, I'll need to put them all together.

I've also completed wide angle drawings of the piazza, looking in all four directions, which I'll post soon as well! I promise to catch up!

Part of my fellowship study, I want to create a section drawing
that explains elements of a typical house, something most visitors
only see from the outside....

Writing lots of notes on this map of town, and even more on my computer...I'll need
an editor  (I'm actually understanding the Italian in the books I'm reading pretty well...)  

This ~3000 year old Etruscan cave opens out to the cliffs,
common for tombs. Sandro is there for scale,
and he is showing me the cave! He is an original Civitonico.
The cave is right under a house down the street...

And here is the cave, a sarcophagus would lie on the left, and someone later
added an oven on the right...sure, baking in a cave tomb, why not?