Architecture  ·  Exteriors

Sketching & Watercolor in Sicily

While I draw in my practice almost every day, it’s almost always at the drafting table, producing scaled plans and elevations intended to illustrate solutions to clients’ needs, never the sort of “plein-air” sketching I remember from my days as an art student, when I was a kid.

The ICA&A (Institute of Classical Architecture & Art) gives drawing tours from time to time, in places like Rome and Paris as part of their education programs…something about these excursions—outdoors perched on a stool, sketching in a drawing pad—that was a wonderful change of pace.

In the days of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, they’d send you out to measure and draw up ancient structures, and something about sitting down to sketch some centuries-old building produces this amazing process, where you really need to think about what the forms and shadows are doing, discovering layers and complexity you didn’t realize, at a casual glance, were there, trying to transfer it to the page.

My friend Andrew (another architect, from out west, who I’d met on a previous ICA&A trip) and I decided to go to Sicily this spring (no ICA&A Rome tour this year) and try our hand at the Baroque and Rococo buildings scattered around placed like Noto and Siracusa.

Not that this kind of architecture has a place in contemporary design—I’m not sure Baroque and Rococo are even my favorite styles, if I had to pick historic schools of design—but the quality of the Sicilian sunlight casting shadows across these complex facades was a real challenge, in a delightful way…

Oftentimes, I’d only get partway into a drawing before the light moved around the building, or it was time to meet our traveling companions for lunch (an important part of any trip to Sicily), but even the half-finished sketches were interesting “gesture drawings”

We packed our watercolor supplies, promising ourselves we’d take time out with us every day to do washes and brush-work as well, but time and failing technique too often got in the way…

We were in Palermo and Rome, briefly, on the way back to the States (almost no direct flights) but this DIY experiment was definitely and inspiration for future jaunts…perhaps a few of you drawers and painters out there would like to join us next time…

And I can’t close without a loving thank-you to my long-suffering wife Stephanie, who put up with our absences and distractions: hopefully the arancini, pane and panelle, cappuccino and gelato helped while away the time…