Returning to Portugal – very soon now!

Here’s a look back in time to 2004 – some of my very earliest location drawings.

These are from one of our first trips expressly for drawing. We spent a week or so in and around Tomar, just a bit north of Lisbon. We rented a car (expensive!) and drove all over the twisty mountain roads – found some beautiful locations. The first drawing is the mountain town Marvão. I think the arches are from Alcobaça. The last is in Tomar itself, from a nice cafe on in the shopping district, looking up a the local convento.

I’m getting excited to go back to Portugal next month for the USK symposium. This time we’ll be drawing in the city of Lisbon for three days, after which I expect I’ll spend a little time in Sintra and Belém. It will be interesting to see how different the drawings are now!

These, by the way, are why I don’t draw in sketchbooks anymore! What do you do with images that go across the spine? And I do like to cut out bad sketches. So that left me with the hard choice of losing a good one on the back of a bad page, or sometimes keeping a drawing that didn’t turn out, in order to save a spread. Thus – now I draw on loose sheets.