Basilica di Santa Ciara, Assisi

A view, drawn from life in my sketchbook, of the basilica of Saint Clare - the close companion of Saint Francis of Assisi. She is buried there, in the 19th century crypt.

But the building is 13th century, and is a nice enough example of the rather squat Italian Gothic style of the central Middle Ages. It's basically a huge stone barn, with what are surely the ostriches of the flying buttress world. They barely look as if they could get off the ground at all.

Montrichard

A view of Montrichard, in the Tourraine, France, painted from the far side of the river. It was a nice day, and I was taking a break from watching the local kennel club's agility trials.

Behind the houses is the church of Saint Croix, a largely romanesque structure, although the tower is gothic. I made an etching of its facade, which you can see here. Above it, the fortified keep of the castle built by the irrepressible Foulques Nerra, the Black Falcon, whose wars vexed the region in the 11th century.

Fonte Nuova d'Ovile, Siena.

This was, I think, the first picture I made in Siena, Italy. I cycled from Florence - not a short ride - and into the hilltop city. My route to the city centre took me past the Fonte Nuova - that's the new fountain, of course, built as recently as the late 13th century by a pair of architects with the portentous names of Carmaino di Crescentino and Sozzo di Rustichino.

Of course I had to stop and get out the watercolours. I used the fountain's water for my brushes.

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Torre del Gallo

The Torre del Gallo broods over the hills to the south of Florence. Despite its impressive medieval ambience, it is a modern invention - although there was a castle on the hilltop, that in the 13th century controlled the road to Impruneta. But the tower was built around 1905, and has been through some vicissitudes since. In WWII, it was briefly a prison camp.

I made this watercolour on site, in early May.

The isle of the dead in the Venetian lagoon

I took a seat on the north-east edge of Venice and made this post-card sized sketch of the city's cemetery island. Relatively recent by Venetian standards, the cemetery was founded adjacent to the old abbey of San Michele, which gave the island its name.

The path in the woods

A watercolour sketch of the woods adjacent to San Miniato, just south of Florence.

Near Sisteron

A few years ago I spent a few weeks cycling in Provence. A few day's ride up the Durance you may find the absurdly dramatic town of Sisteron, and adjacent (just across the river, in fact) to it this small burg. Beyond it, the beginnings of the Cottian Alps.

Drawing a view of Siena

Siena, as I have mentioned more than once, is one of my favourite cities. It combines variety with consistency in just the right degree. I made a large drawing of the city's core, including the zebra-striped tower of the cathedral and the hulking skeleton of the never completed duomo nuovo. The sightline between the two trees originates at Santa Maria degli Servi, another of Siena's many churches - one I have depicted before.

This is just a detail of the original, which measure around 20" square. You can see the whole thing here, and in situ on instagram.

I used a variety of drawing media, starting with a pencil outline. Then india ink, via brush and dip pen, Pigma micron pens, my beloved Pentel brush pen, and a china marker. The drawing is currently on display at the Locomotive cafe in London, Ontario.

tree and Saint Peter's

I drew this in a matter of minutes, standing in the window of the Vatican Pinocoteca. There was a Raphael near by, but sometimes real life outweighs the greatest masterpieces.

You can see the arch and stairway reading to the garden pavilion begun by Pope Paul IV in 1558, now known as the Casina Pio IV after the later pope who competed it. In the distance, the huge dome of Saint Peter's, and between them a beautiful pine tree that deserves a name of its own - to judge by its size, it may be as old as the buildings.

drawing in the dark

A homage to jet lag. I had just arrived in Italy, from Toronto, and sleep was out of the question. So I walked out into the night, crossed the Arno on an easterly bridge, and strolled up into the hills. I had with me a pot of india ink, a nib and pen, and an old brown sketchbook. It was enough.

Tuscan hillside

One of many watercolours painted while wandering in the hills north of Florence. The row of trees leading up the hill to the right shroud the path to a small renaissance church, in whose shadow I sat while I painted. It overlooks the small village of Ponte a Mensola, named for a stream you cannot see amid the trees in the picture.

It was a sunny day in May, perfect for watercolours. Here's another one I did from almost the same vantage point, but looking north rather than east.

Gordes - in progress

I'm currently working on a large drawing of the complicated medieval hill town of Gordes, in Provence, France. I visited a few years back and was fascinated by the heap of interconnected buildings that rise almost organically from the yellow stone.

This is a slice of the drawing, showing the pencil lines and also the beginning of the inks.

Since the drawing isn't finished, I haven't scanned it yet - this is a snap from my tablet camera. I cleaned it up a bit, but there's still a lot of noise in the image.

Castle Mane, in Provence

On a warm day in May I cycled from the village of Gordes to the small town of Forcalquier, across the Luberon, and enjoying along the way some of Provence's more rugged terrain. Just before Forcalquier I passed through the small community of Mane.

From the point of view of someone interested in Medieval architecture, Mane has two things: the beautifully atmospheric Priory of Salagon, and the much less distinctive castle. I made sketches of both.

Forcalquier was effectively the capital of an independent state for much of the middle ages, and the castle at Mane guarded the approach to the city. It was seemingly built in the 12th century, and expanded many times thereafter.

the beacon

At night in Venice, I saw a red light glimmering over the canal, and stopped to make a watercolour.

Worth mentioning: it's not easy to paint in the dark.

Florence: Via Lamione

I made this quick watercolour and india ink sketch while strolling the countryside just south of Florence.

The towers of Siena

One April I cycled to Siena, the rose-red gothic metropolis of central Tuscany that, of all the many beautiful medieval cities in Italy, is perhaps the most beautiful.

I arrived from Florence. In that city, apparently, they have a traditional proverb about Siena:

Siena
Di tre cose e piena:
Torri, campane,
E figge di putane.

I shall leave it untranslated. Let it be a warning to anyone here who’s thinking of visiting this most charming of Italian cities. It should also be a warning about Florence. For a city that for 500 years has prided itself on speaking the purest Italian (except Siena, see below), and producing the best poets (or at least Dante, who counts as more than one), you’d think they’d be able to come up with something better.

Or maybe the point is to express maximum contempt with the least possible effort. I lived in Toronto for a long time, and it makes me wonder: are there poets in Hamilton or Windsor right now, sharpening their pens?

Back to Siena. Norman Douglas summed it up in one word: "hell." I can only say that of all cities I’ve visited, except Venice, it is the most beautiful. Now if only we could get rid of the Senese, who profit from the immigrant labour of southern italy, but refuse to speak to the labourers. Or so I was told by an indignant Sicilian I met on Via Fiorentina.

In Siena they speak, tourist books claim, the most pure and refined Italian to be found in the country, but I’m sceptical. Someplace or another has to have a title like this one, but why is it always a town full of money and visibly smug in its affluence? But this is just predjudice on my part. My command of the language is not sufficient to enable me to judge for myself. All I can say is that in Siena Italian is much easier to understand than in the Veneto, and that here all the women enunciate every letter in ciao, stretching the word out so that it rhymes with meow, like a cat. It’s an enchanting habit.

The basilica at Assisi

One fine spring day I bicycled to Assisi (from Perugia - it wasn't much of a journey) with my sketchbook and sat down to draw buildings.

So here is a fast sketch of the famous basilica of San Francesco. It's a great building, if you're into gothic architecture. It's two churches, one of them built atop the other - you can see the entrance to the lower one at the bottom of the steps on the left. Whether Saint Francis himself would have been pleased with it is another question.

Even if you're not into architecture, the frescos by Giotto make the trip worthwhile, and Assisi itself is a very charming town. Here is a sketch of the town square, complete with Roman ruins, that I did on the same trip.

Santa Maria di Salute, Venice

A view across the quay and the loitering gondolas at the vast baroque church of Salute. It's the kind of view that's been done a thousand times but remains irresistible.

It's an etching, about 4" by 6," printed at the Open Studio in Toronto, Ontario. The uniform blue was applied with a technique called chine collé, in which a layer of tissue-thin tinted paper is laid down between the etching plate and the support paper.

Venice - the gondolas on the Riva degli Schiavoni

It was a cool November evening when I sat down on the embankment to make this picture.

I was in a hurry. The shapes were quickly sketched in with a black crayon, and then rounded out with watercolour. Although I started with lines - as I almost always do - the picture quickly became about mass and pattern. The final touches were added in gouache; you can see its opaque layers where the blue covers of the gondolas are visible above the dock.

In the background, San Giorgio Maggiore was a box of shadows, except for its brilliant marble facade, which here merges with the air.

Along the Arno

A view of the north bank of the Arno, the Lungardo Corsini, painted from the southern embankment. On a warm October day, I sat down and painted this.

It's a bit unusual a choice of subject for me. I like buildings, but not usually this kind of late Renaissance and Baroque architecture, where so much of the effect relies on monumentality and repetition. Who wants to draw fifty-plus windows? Apparently I did.