My Italy Sketchbook

   Yikes, it's been 2 months since my last post! It may sound lame, but I'll use my trip to Italy as an excuse. Fellow artist, Vera Dickerson and I led a group of 19 other artists for two weeks of painting,  sightseeing, dining and wine-ing in Umbria and Tuscany. Early October is a gorgeous time of year to visit.
   The first week was spent at La Romita School of Art, a former monastery built in the 1500s -- now privately owned and hosting artist groups. The atmosphere is relaxed and the hospitality is genuine. Each day we were taken to interesting, and often out of the way, villages -- the kind that most tourists never get to see. You can find out more about them at www.laromita.org
   The second week, we settled into a hotel in Cortona, but not without taking day trips to two of Italy's landmark cities, Florence and Sienna.
   I found inspiration at every turn, but there just weren't enough hours in the day to be able complete my sketchbook. This one will have to be a work in progress, and I promise to post the remaining pages once completed! Meanwhile, here's a peak at some of the pieces I did on location.

The Joy of Sketching

     Make no mistake, I love creating full-scale studio watercolor paintings, but it's my travel sketchbooks that are dearest to my heart.
     I create my own by cutting down sheets of watercolor paper into manageable page sizes (6x8 or so) and have them spiral bound at the local office supply store. To me, each trip warrants its own sketchbook... sometimes it's 6 pages, sometimes it's 20. I wait to decorate the cover once I'm home and have time to reflect on the flavor of the trip.
     Here's a peek at a sketchbook I completed last fall in Italy. It's 7.5" x 8" and has 18 pages. The cover is white mat board that I covered with an old piece of rice pager and then painted and glued the circular design on the cover. (That design was inspired from a beautiful ceramic table top that I saw in a shop.)