Europe18: Verona

June 8, 2018 | 8 Comments

Earlier in the week I spent two nights in Verona and had a wonderful time. Apart from dinner with some friends on the first evening (more about that later) I was on my own. It was a great chance to catch up with myself and do some sketching ‘just for me.’ I didn’t do any planning beforehand and maintained a chilled pace the whole visit. So I wasn’t trying to sketch a lot, but somehow I managed to. If you follow my Instagram stories you will have seen my 13 pages on Day 2.

So here is a collection of sketches and photos.



What struck me most about Verona was all the layers of history (a little like Rome) and lots of arches. The photo on the left was the alleyway of my Airbnb.


I loved the main Piazza – Piazza Erbe


Because it was raining slightly I started in ink… and continued in ink.


Last year in Vicenza I met a lovely Scottish sketching couple who live in Verona – here is a photo from 2017 of Alison.


So this year I had dinner with them at their favourite local place with a lovely view of a bridge. We had a great time getting to know each other (including discovering that we have a mutual friend who lives in a remote Scottish village). Thanks Alison and Matthew for a lovely evening!



The next day I wandered down to the impressive Roman Arena, but this was all I was inspired to do. I’m sure it is great inside, but I wanted to have time at my next destination.


Castelvecchio Museum. Verona’s historic castle which was converted into a museum by the wonderful Italian architect, Carlo Scarpa. I might not mention him much, but he is one of my favourite architects. This was a major fangirl moment taking photos and doing numerous small sketches.


Everywhere I looked there was a beautiful detail. Sigh, so gorgeous!


A few very interesting stair designs. I started taking photos of the junctions and fixing (ie. back into practicing architect mode).


There were a few walkways as well in the museum, I stopped at one to sketch the beautiful Castelvecchio Bridge below – for the 30×30 directwatercolour challenge!


I sketched the front of the castle from the comfort of a cafe.

I spent quite a bit of time in the morning thinking about how to mix the red brick colour. It was lighter than I initially thought so I started with a good mix of Potters Pink and then added some more earth pigments as required.


On the walk back to my Airbnb, I stopped numerous times to do a small sketch of something that caught my eye.


If you are wondering about Juliet and her balcony, I wasn’t at all impressed. However I had an exciting moment when I realised that my neighbour was the Juliet Club – women who reply to the letters left for Juliet. I also spoke to one of the senior ‘secretaries of Juliet.’ The first photo shows the red postbox from my front door.

A fun end to my brief stay in Verona!


 

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