I have just returned home from Naples, where I had the honor of being invited as an instructor to Simo Capecchi´s and Caroline Peyron´s workshop Naples Inventory. I had such a great time, meeting so many incredibly nice participants and other instructors. I also experienced Naples, which is a city unlike any other I have visited – an intense, faded beauty, vibrant with life and full of surprises around every corner! Of course Simo and Caroline brought us all to the most varied, unaccessible and fantastic places in town for the workshops, most of which I would never have found as a ‘normal’ tourist.
The first workshop day started off with me and Federico Gemma doing a demo each on the terraces of Museo Nitsch. The view I had in front of me would have deserved a whole day of drawing, but having only one hour I went for a small part of it.
Next up was a stop at Bosco Capodimonte, where we all had a go at the fantastic Fontana del Bramante (or was it called Fontana Belvedere? Noone was really sure…) while enjoying a tasty veggie picnic that Slowlina brought to us. (I don´t usually put links to non-art related companies on my blog, but these guys really deserve all the attention they can get – I have never had such great picnic food and in such fabulous packaging. Kudos to you, guys!)
I haven´t seen a fountain like this before, it had kind of it´s own little eco system – much like the gaffophone of Gaston that I used to read about as a kid. 😉
In the afternoon Caroline Peyron had us drawing in layers of transparent paper, inside the restauration laboratory and the ballroom of Museo di Capodimonte. The themes for the drawings were Order and Disorder. VERY inspiring technique, I have to try some more of this layer work on my own, I almost couldn´t stop once we got started on this. There is something about the layers of different drawings that I really like.
All images: 21 x 14,5 cm, slightly more for those who stretch across the gutter of the book. Mostly ink pens and watercolours on Stillman & Birn alpha series sketchbook pages.