GET GOING Learning Holiday
Italy
Line of Sight A sketching course in Orvieto, Italy, gives the author a new way to holiday Text & Sketches by Mamta Dalal Mangaldas
A
few years ago, I began to dream I was sketching. In this recurring vision, I’d be travelling round the world and drawing what I saw: a glass of wine, a lone tulip, a fruit vendor. I’d wake up in a sweat. I did not have permission to sketch. Thirty years ago, my school art teacher had withdrawn this consent in no uncertain terms when she declared I had no talent. But Betty Edwards had given it back to me. In her landmark book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Edwards says that anyone who can hold a pencil, write their name and
doodle has the skills to draw. All I had to do was to switch off my overactive, logical left brain, slow down my eyes and learn to see. I began to read every book I could find about sketching. A little while later, I bought the finest implements of the trade: soft and hard pencils, erasers, pure pigment ink pens and cotton rag paper in different weights and textures. The only thing left was to actually grasp the pencil and put it to paper. It turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. But one day, in a trance, I typed three innocuous words into the magic cauldron of Google—sketching, holiday,
Italy. The next thing I knew, I had signed up for a week-long sketching trip and was on my way to the hill-town of Orvieto in the verdant Umbrian countryside, less than two hours north of Rome. It was May. Bright splashes of red poppies dotted the patchwork of rolling hills, neatly planted vineyards, and fields of grain. In the distance I could see a medieval town with spires perched on top of a golden volcanic outcrop. But as we started the climb to Orvieto, all the butterflies I could see in the stunning landscape seem to have invaded my stomach. The fear
of failure loomed large as I rang the bell on the wrought iron gates to the convent that would be my home for the next week. Would I actually be able to put pen to paper and capture the likeness of a bowl of olives or a market scene? As I struggled with my thoughts and my unwieldy suitcase, the gates to Istituto San Lodovico on Piazza Ranieri opened and Sister Maria ushered me in with a 1,000-watt smile. She and two other nuns run a hostel in the convent to finance their charitable school. I surveyed the terracotta tiles, lemon-yellow stone arches and a tree-lined central courtyard, as my hosts Kristi and Bill Steiner, who organised this sketching holiday, took me to my spartan but comfortable room. All doubt flew out of the window as I threw open the louvred shutters and took in the stunning view. I noticed the many shades of green: the black-green of the stately cypresses, the silvery-green of the gnarled olive trees, the lime-green of the vineyards and the yellow-green of the corn fields. That evening, I was introduced to my course instructor, Jane LaFazio. I also met the other participants in the course, all North American women united by the desire to draw. After a long ice-breaking dinner at a local trattoria, we were companionably ready for the week to come. The next morning, Jane began to tell us how to “truly see”. When we learned to see properly, she told us, “the hand would become an extension of the eye”. We were drawing fruit: pears, peaches and apples. I got to draw cherries. “Let your eye caress the cherry,” she urged. “Look—it
is not round. See here, there is a depression where the stem begins. See the connection between the fruit and the stem. And notice the colours. The cherry is not all one colour. There is a bit of red, a bit of blue and some violet that is almost black. See how the light falls on the cherry. Those sparkly bits are the areas that you will not paint—where the whiteness of the paper will show through. This will make the cherries come to life.” To learn how to see, we explored Orvieto. There was no checklist of monuments to tick off and no scurrying from place to place. Instead, we were encouraged to linger. As we eventually returned to the garden of our convent, Jane asked us to choose something we wanted to sketch. I was torn between the rosemary bushes with their spiny leaves and the impossibly red poppies. Eventually, I chose the poppies because they were so evocative of Umbria in the springtime. I looked closely at the flowers. Were they really red? The parts lit by the sun were orange and the parts in the shade were crimson. Their petals were soft and yet papery.
I wondered how to capture all these conflicting elements on paper. Later, I tried to draw the arches framing the courtyard. Drawing the vaulted ceiling made me dizzy. I decided that botanical paintings were much easier than architectural sketches. Perspective was going to be my bugbear. One day, we walked at a leisurely pace down Corso Cavour—the main drag with tiny shops selling the region’s specialties: hand-carved olive wood souvenirs, artisanal pottery, the local white wine called Orvieto Classico, black Norcio truffles, and a million other gastronomical delights. The buildings were made of tufa rock. They changed colour from dark ochre to glowing honey with every movement of light. We discovered that the sun and the clouds have an important role to play in drawing. Jane taught us how to use our arms and hands to gauge perspective and transfer the angles we measured onto paper. It was not as easy as it looked. A short walk from our convent brought us to Via Ripa Medici, the street that rings the walled town and offers a 360 degree balcony view of the Umbrian countryside. We slowed down our eyes and took in the scene before deciding what to sketch and paint. Jane is also a quilter and often described art using textile terminology. We
NOVEMBER 2012 | national Geographic Traveller INDIA 113