Watercolor practice - Entering Pompeii

The entrance to Pompeii

Entering the city along a long sloping stone street, the walls of the city confront you and embrace you. The stone in the street are hard and cold in the sun, but worn to a smooth softness by thousands of summers. A cold dark archway tunnel appears ahead; we must walk through the blackness underneath a scaffold. Entering into the city, the sun blinds us as we adjust to the vast area of carved flat stone courts, and what used to be the administrative buildings, temples and public forums. We pass into shady small streets, and take refuge from the sun in the inner courts of urban houses, with small rectangular pools that naturally cool the courts, and feel a breeze pass through the house as we tiptoe back into the inner garden, hoping the owner of the house, an official or some important person, doesnt suddenly come home and find us there looking around his contemplative garden, or studying the family portraits. Walking alittle further, we walk past restaurants and cafes and bars, quiet right now, but probably will be pretty raucous later in the evening. You can still almost smell the food cooking in the stove open the the street. Maybe if we wait, we can just buy something from the sidewalk.

This is from a trip we made the summer before last to southern Italy. When we got there, we quickly decided to see Pompeii and a few other things. A train connects the coastal towns, so you can hop on a train and pass signs that say "Pompeii" and "Vesuvius" and "Napoli" and so on. Inside, are all of the things famous from the pictures, plus less famous things hard to describe, like the way walls were built, indoor and outdoor plumbing, how they bridged across streets so that carts could go in the streets and people could walk on the sidewalks, all kinds of gardens and courts, and the design in the city for solar and ventilation. Pompeii was a coastal town, with a port. So, the entrance ramp/street where the sketch is made seemed to me quite similar to the same kind of entrance street in the city of Amalfi, with a large sloping street leading down to the harbor. anyway, the whole place feels like someplace where people have walked for thousands of years, which they have. And now you've seen the entrance to the ancient city of Pompeii. We were there in August, so it was hot, sunny, and quiet.

Amazingly, there was an eyewitness account of the destruction of Pompeii..... and it still exists....... http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/pompeii.htm

There's a discovery channel episode about the eyewitness account.....
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/pliny/video.html


Sketch practice: 06.05.09


















Blvd. Schitul Magureanu, Bucuresti.

This house sits across the street from Cismigiu Park... It's a lovely little villa overlooking the park.