Douro River Cruise Sketches
Sketching is my favorite art activity. I sketch for various reasons and purposes. But no matter the reason, the act of sketching requires active, conscious engagement with the subject.
One of the reasons I sketch is to connect with places I travel. I am fortunate to have opportunities to visit interesting places beyond the United States every year. Like many others, learning about and exploring new places is interesting and stimulating. As a visual artist, a good bit of what I learn about a place happens via visual learning, including that which happens as one observes and translates to paint. The river cruise was a tour and vacation rather than a painting trip, so most of my time was spent at other activities. But, I did manage to get six sketches done over the course of a seven day cruise.
Here they are.
Quick Sketch To Get A Feel For The Rhythm Of The Landscape
This work was literally done while the boat was cruising. It also happened to be the first image of the trip so was a bit of a warm up, just to get a feel for the area, the geography and the landscape. One of the most notable characteristics of the Douro River is the steeply sloping hillsides. It would be a dramatic landscape if only for that. But in addition, the grasses, trees and other vegetation varied in their particular green colors. This sketch was certainly a ‘warm up’. It was worked quickly and was intended to capture the drama and color variety as an initial exploration.
This sketch is available as a fine art print in my online store.
Mateus Palace
The palace is an ornate building in the Baroque style. It is ornate, complicated and a challenge for this reason alone. Just to add to the challenge, I had a limited amount of time - about 1 hour and 15minutes - to finish. The limited amount of available time meant simplifying and capturing a sense of complexity and scale without adding much detail. I decided to focus on getting a sense of light and overall impression rather than a more detailed study. Blocking in large areas of color is the best way to have a sketch or painting move along quickly. That was the approach taken for this sketch. Light and dark shapes along with contrasting temperature patterns form the foundation of the painting. Fluid passages that encouraged color to mix and mingle on the paper provide a sense of detail that eliminated the need to add much in the way of actual detail.
This sketch is also available as a fine art print.
Vineyards Along The Douro.
This is the wine producing area of Porto. Much of the agricultural output is dedicated to vineyards. The steep hills that slope down to the river are great terrain for wine grapes but require a terraced system that maximizes plantable area. The terraces create distinctive patterns on the hills and are featured in this sketch.
As the ship was moving as I worked on this sketch, meaning that the scene ended up far behind by the time I finished. The trick to working from a moving boat is to lay in a minimal pencil sketch while making mental note of important aspects of the scene that could be recalled once the scene was out of view.
This sketch is also available as a fine art print.
Light On A Bell Tower In Salamanca, Spain.
The Douro is not a large nor long river. The river cruise was an out-and-back trip. The ‘out’ ended at the border with Spain. The tour was bussed from there to the beautiful city of Salamanca, Spain. It was a beautiful city with much to see and learn. But I found another hour and a half to create a sketch. For this one, the primary concern was finding a shady place since it was a very hot day. The group was to meet the busses that would return us to the ship, very near the Playa de Anaya. It made sense to set up there.
I found a place that would remain shady for the short painting session. Since the shade was the primary concern I looked for a subject once I was situated.
The subject that caught my eye was an old bell tower partially lit, but mostly in shade. Many buildings in Salamanca are constructed of a warm hued sandstone, as is the bell tower. One of the effects of the warm stone material is that even the shadowed areas are warm in temperature. These warm shadows contrasted with other bits of architecture that were not only in the shade but looked ‘cooler’ as shadowed objects typically do.
The biggest challenge with this subject was capturing both value and temperature shift while retaining some ‘warm’ in the shadows on the sandstone structures.
I decided to skip one of the group tours toward the end of the cruise. This gave me the chance to do the most complex subject I took on during the trip. This one is a view is of the ship’s empty sundeck. It’s empty because most everyone was off on the afternoon tour. You might notice the hyphenated date noted at the bottom of the sketch. It is so because I worked on this scene over two sessions on two days.
With this one, the ship was moving along the river, but - obviously - everything in this scene was on the deck. It provided the time to make a more complete drawing, which also took more time. The complex scene was compelling but the real subject is the light on the scene and the relationships of various shapes and colors.
This sketch is also available as a fine art print.
A Tiered, Sloped Vineyard On Douro Hills
This is a smaller sketch that is another attempt at capturing a view of the river and sloping hills in a fast, loose impression as the scene passed by too quickly on the moving ship.
As with the previous two river/landscape sketches, the goal was to capture the essence of the scene with a loose, fluid, impressionistic approach. This success (or failure) of this sort of approach all hangs on the underlying composition structure which itself requires clear shape and value relationships.
Although this is the simplest of the six works done during the week, it’s one of my favorites precisely because of its simple expression and quiet essence.