Venice - Thursday 12th May 2005

And the sun shone again! We took the vaporetto down the Grand Canal to St Tomo and went to the square in front of the Friary Church (in the Santa Croce and San Polo district).

I was very sniffy and said it didn't do anything for me and went off on a walk in search of something better but didn't find anything. Came back and walked to a different bit of the square (the quiet bit with the sunshine!) and instantly found a view - such is life! It always pays to walk all the way around the first place you come to before setting off to find something better! Anyway, I set myself up on the doorstep of the Institute of Archivists (I kid you not!) and proceeded to get going on this view - except this is the photo take nearer the end when I'd worked out that I needed some people to give scale to the piece.

In the middle of the square shortly after I started, was a guitar player sitting playing classical guitar - in classical guitarist pose. (This is the way to draw/paint folks - in the sunshine in Venice with somebody playing classical guitar less than a stone's throw away!) so guess what the piece will be called. This one is a dead cert to be done again - but needs lots of thinking around how to populate it with figures without losing the focus on the guitar player who I want to be deliberately understated.

Anyway, here is the colour study sketch - minus all figures except the classical guitar player - in my sketch book - hence slightly funny looking scan. It's across two pages and I had to stitch them together and the software didn't want to do it automatically so I had to it 'manually'. It's the biggest drawing I actually did while I was there approx 17" x 9" in about 2-3 hours. Eyeballing all the way on all that ' challenging' perspective in sepia ink before I started to use the CPs.

Then I had a chinese lunch(!) sitting in the sunshine in the chinese cafe in the square and sketched a window with flowers in pots, again in sepia ink inbetween munching prawn crackers.

After lunch, I walked north from the church, back to the Fish Market and set up to the left of the Fiush Market and opposite the Ca d'Oro to see how much I could get done of that.

I'd already worked out that in the late afternoon that the sun would be on the building and I would get to sit in the shade. (It's always a good idea to work out where the sun will be at different times of day if you're staying in one place and can choose when to do your sketch / drawing / painting).

Here's the photo and then the painting - with a big space to the left as I ran out of puff for painting! The Ca d'Oro has a marble front - hence why it is so very pale. Finally at 6 o'clock, I 'clocked off' and caught the traghetto back over the Canal to get back to my pre-dinner drink at the cafe on the corner.

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