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Paris to Bologna Drawings

These are my drawings from the bike trip. They start with the Palais Royale fountain — my favorite spot in Paris — then the Loire, the Atlantic coast including Noirmoutier and Ile de Re, the Dordogne, Toulouse, the Gran Massif, Nice, and then a couple of sketches of Emilia Romagna and the Langhe in Piedmont. I might return to this post to label the drawings and alternately mock France and sing its praises, but for now I just feel like posting the drawings.


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Spain and Portugal Drawings

This is my first blog post in a couple of years. I’ve spent the Covid years either working or hunkered down, and haven’t really felt motivated. This summer, though, I took my first significant trip in three years, riding a bicycle for six weeks in Portugal and Spain, and I got some of my blogging mojo back; Spain and Portugal are absolutely filled with subjects right in the drystonegarden wheelhouse. I expect to do at least a half dozen posts before my mojo runs out, and maybe I’ll keep going after that.
To start with, these are my drawings from the trip, almost one per day, loosely following my progress from Lisbon up through the interior of Portugal, then through the northern interior of Spain to Pamplona, then along Spain’s north coast loosely following the Camino de Santiago Norte to Santiago de Compostela, and then back down to Lisbon. It was a great trip, my third bike trip in Europe, and I can’t wait until my next one.
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Bourgeois Spiders

So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls? — Mike Pence David Bowie

Last summer I saw a collection of Louise Bourgeois’s spider sculptures in the gardens at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I’d seen them before, indoors at the MOMA in San Francisco, but I liked them even better when I saw them outdoors set against the Rijskmuseum’s formal brick building and gardens. And I appreciate them even more now after drawing them; they’re quite varied, each one looks different from every angle, and the context around them can create a lot of interesting effects.

This one reminds me of a tree as much as a spider, as if Bourgeois or her fabricator had been snorkeling in a mangrove swamp.

But most of them have a strong metal spider vibe. H. R. Giger with a little bit of Tolkien thrown in, the Hobbit spiders rather than the scarier Lord of the Rings one.

Her largest and most famous spider is called ‘Maman’, which means ‘Mother’. It wasn’t at the Rijksmuseum; I haven’t seen it in person, but I’m a sucker for these kinds of installation videos with cranes and cherry pickers and shots of the lug bolts holding it all together. I’ve seen videos with her talking about the symbolism and ideation of it all, but I think underneath it all she just realized that big metal spiders would look cool. Very very cool.

Amsterdam to Italy

I did another bicycle trip this summer, riding from Amsterdam to Italy. Fun times. I started in Dutch canal and windmill country, rode down through Belgium, bits of France, Luxembourg and Germany, then to Basel, Zurich, and Innsbruck, and then down through the Dolomites to just outside Venice. I went through 9 countries all told, though that includes just 20 minutes crossing Liechtenstein. I took lots of photos of gardens and stone along the way which I’ll be showing in the future. For now, these are my drawings from the trip.
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Italy Drawings

Bolgona, Via Rizzoli

These are my drawings from Italy. Mostly piazzas. I found it very pleasant to sit at a cafe or on some steps and draw a lovely Italian piazza. Towards the end are a bunch of bridges in Venice. Drawing saved Venice for me. I was shocked by the onslaught of crowds and felt bad to be a part of it, but I eventually found a bench to sit and draw Piazza San Marcos, and it felt like catching my breath. Later I drew a bunch of the bridges and ignored everyone taking selfies on them. I missed a lot of the famous sites, but I felt good about what I did see and glad I got to see such a unique city. Venice is amazing, Italy is amazing, I hope to go back as soon as next summer. (more…)

Switzerland Drawings

These are my drawings from Switzerland. They loosely track my progress across the country. The furthest west is from Lausanne on Lake Geneva. The last is a view from Guarda, a town in the lower Engadine near the Austrian border. The interior view and the pool are from Therme Vals, Peter Zumthor’s phenomenal thermal baths.


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