Source of the Tiber

This watercolour is looking north towards the Appalachian Mountains where the river Tiber rises and ultimately flows through Rome. At the minute the grain has been cut and the tobacco is just about ready to be harvested. As it dries out it turns all shades of green, yellow and Umbrian brown making the landscape very colourful to look at.

Trades II 1602 - lunchtime.

This is my next installment from the 1602 poster of occupations in Italy from 1602. Don't worry we will soon have videographer and slurpy maker in the series.

Today we have Woodworker and Ropemaker

Trades 1602 - M. DC. II

So Summer is over, well we can't complain here, as we have had about 2 hours rain in twelve weeks and only the occassional cloud. Over the weekend they held a medieval festival in Citta di Castello, all the local people dressed up in traditional clothes and turn the house fronts into market stalls, taverns, blacksmithy or pottery. It proved to be excellent entertainment. There are falconry displays, public execution and battles all with a olde world feel about it. As Castello is comprised of lots of narrow alleyways and piazza's, it makes a first class venue.

So it was here that I bought a lovely, small, handmade, leather bound sketch pad and decided to do some reworkings of an old poster depicting the trades locally in 1602, the idea is eventually to have a little book full of medieval influenced sketches, paintings and drawings and these are the first three. Butcher, Armourer and wine trader.

JULY GALLERY

July's Gallary of sketches

Hillside Farm Also

Another from the lets get some sun and have a picnic series. This area is full of these sorts of buildings all angles and trees, with no visible way of reaching them, they always seem to be such mystical places tucked away on the side of the mountains.

Hillside Farm

A painting of one of the abandoned farms I sketched whilst out last weekend, working from the initial drawings and colour notes I painted this in a style similar to the last picture. There are so many trees its difficult to come up with a wide variety of greens to depict the foliage, especially as I am colour blind and its all orange anyway.

Mountain View

I did this drawing for my friend who is moving to live by the seaside, to have a beach life. As she was born and bred in the mountains of Umbria I suspect there will always be a part of her that will long for the green heart of Italy. So if she feels lonely and longs for the hills, mountains, sunflower fields and trees I hope this picture will give her just that. When I gave it to her, she said "Oh I know that house its over the road, years ago when it was abandoned, we used to go there and smoke". Ahhh kids hey.

The Secret Monastery

Quick sketches of La Preg, side view
The much altered rear view

La Preghiera, (the prayer) is in parts over 1000 years old and started out as a monastery serving the monks of the area. The road past the front of the complex is on the St Francis trail from Cortona to Assisi so it is highly likely that he stayed here, ate bread and maybe said a prayer in the Oratorio. Now it has been completely refurbished and is an Agritourismo where you can spend a peaceful vacation absorbing the calm of the area. I luckily work here so get to sit in these beautiful surrounds on a daily basis.