ultraMARIN Sketch

We spend a weekend in Jerusalem - city I always feel like a tourist in it. One hour of driving from Tel Aviv - and everything is changing - the landscape, the architecture, the people and even the air (freezing!). I love the variety of this city, the sense of many layers of history and holy spirit that hover over it. One of my "must" places to visit and sketch is Mahane Yehuda market - big and vibrant area full of vendors and food stalls. I love to sit on the bar of one of the coffee shops, observing the human ocean moving all the time, trying to absorb the movement, sounds and smells and put it all on paper.  here is another sketch did there few month earlier: Here is my attempt to capture the view from the window - one hour of meditation, watching how everything is changing during the sunset...  At the evening we went to the Yellow Submarine, great place to see some music performances: And the next morning, before leaving, we had a breakfast in Tmol Shilshom...

It's been a while since my last post here. Social networks took place of blogs, we use to share visuals instant with minimum words and to get immediate response. But I don't want to give up on blogging, keeping some chronological report on my stuff, something I can look back on. Recently, I scanned my moleskine sketchbook I finished in the last year (2019). I'm too lazy to scan my sketches right away, especially, after I already posted them "in process" on Instagram. But there is something nice in looking back at the whole sketchbook - the changes of subjects, mood and tools during the timeline...

This is my Inktober harvest. I didn't stick strict to the rules, but tried every time I sketched to use ink tools only. Forcing myself to use materials which usually aren't my first choice, feeling a bit uncomfortable, little by little expanding techniques and their possibilities, finding new ways to express what I see, was really fun and helpful. It also was very simplifying for my sketching process, because I'm not one-tool person and love to switch my tools often. I think it's very healthy to limit yourself from time to time, I'm thinking about doing in the future some Graphite-bruary or Gouache-vember ;)

I always have doubts when I’m packing my sketching bag for a trip, and so it was while preparing for the short family trip to Tuscany. From my experience, there are not many opportunities for sketching on family trips. Other family members don’t like “wasting” time, time is too short, places are too beautiful, and each one wants to see something a bit different. Finally, I decided to bring small 10-paged soft-cover sketchbook with nice paper, and it fit perfectly! So here they are, some memories I succeeded in “stealing” during the trip. Most days I had some free time at the beautiful Tuscany Villa we stayed at. There are also some “eating time” sketches – another opportunity for sketchers not to "waste" time during trips. And there are some places I forced my family to wait for me – a few iconic spots in Florence and Sienna where I couldn’t not sketch. This was my second visit to Tuscany, and I had some magical memories from the Piazza del Campo in Sienna. My ...