Rome Through a Traveling Easel
A 10-Day Plein Air Experience
Day 0 – Warmup
I put my setup consisting of a backpack filled with carefully packed supplies to the test. It was also a way for me to see if I was ready to paint amongst a crowd of tourists.
Day 1 – Ponte Sisto
The day began with getting our easels set up and learning the Dan Sprick method of establishing light and shadow areas, perspective lines and determining a good composition.
Day 2 – Piazza DEl Biscione
The market inside this busy square was our subject for 10 hours. The oil paints dried up on my palette every few hours. That never happens in Seattle!
Day 3 – Castel Sant ‘Angelo
11 hours of painting and I didn’t know where the time went. The river Tiber glows in the sun and the Basilica is at a distance.
Day 4 – Rome Art Residency building
We stayed indoors to paint the view from outside the window. Narrow streets, wonky perspective lines and compressed values made the painting experience very interesting.
Day 5
A thunderstorm made us quit midway as we painted this beautiful fountain.
Day 6 – Gianicolo
I may have not finished the painting but I learned the most on this day. To capture sweeping views of an entire city is difficult. For 6 hours I worked on tiny dots representing buildings, trees, sunlit areas, monuments and domes. That was only 30 percent of the view and the sun was already setting. I decided to just observe the master at work and ask him questions. Dan was so gracious and shared his creative process with me. You know what they say? He said – “The last 10 percent is 90 percent of the work.”
Day 7 –Piazza Del Popolo
The view of the Piazza below us over the course of the day was marked by the shadow of the Obelisk, showing us what time of day it was, like a clock. We listened to live music as we painted till sunset.
Day 8 – Galleria Borghese and the Modern Museum
Ellipses!
All circles in perspective are ellipses with varying eccentricities. We painted the fountain twice. It was nice to do a museum tour in between.
Day 9 – The Roman Forum
It was a scorchingly hot day. The view filled me with awe. I wasn’t at all confident about tackling such a complex subject matter. Dan helped by asking me to just focus on the columns closest to me. We started around 9:30 AM and by 3:00 PM, I chose to call it done at this stage.
Day 10 – Fontana delle Tartarughe
We painted this beautiful fountain on our last day. It was not too crowded and thankfully, we were in the shadows for most of it. I did not complete the painting and had to go back to finish. I painted another version from a different angle the second time.
Day 10
Caught in action!