Human faces are very difficult subjects, but made easier when frozen in stone as is this Roman river deity from the 2nd century AD.
Roman River Deity
Cannon Beach
Cannon Beach, along the Oregon coast, is a wide, beautifully serene stretch of sand, punctuated by Haystack Rock, a solid basalt formation from an ancient lava flow.
Bhalil
A roadway in Bhalil, Morocco, leading up to the historic cave houses that date back to the 4th century.
Rome’s Rooftops
A familiar sight whenever one looks out from an upper story in Rome—a collage of church domes, tile roofs, and tv antennae.
Tempietto
The Tempietto is a small, elegant temple situated in an outer cloister of San Pietro in Montorio, reportedly the site of St. Peter’s crucifixion, on the eastern slope of Gianicolo Hill in Rome. King Ferdinand commissioned Donato Bramante to design the martyrium in the early 16th century. It is basically a cylindrical form ringed by a series of Tuscan columns and topped by a hemispherical concrete dome. This and other examples of western classical and renaissance architecture are difficult to draw well due to the genre’s precise attention to proportion and scale. It is relatively easy to distort their forms, as in this case, where the vertical axis tilts slightly and the cylindrical from droops downward and to the left.
A Sicilian Hilltown
Recalling memories of driving across Sicily in 2006 with Deb and friends Margie and Jim.
Near, Middle, Far
In this view of an art museum in Palermo, I am looking from an upper level, through a staircase in the middle ground, to a courtyard beyond. To convey a sense of spatial depth on the page, I attempted to use relative values and value contrast to suggest what is near, clarifying what is in the middle ground, and again merely suggesting what is far away. In the image below, I have stripped away the color to show the equivalent gray values of the sketch.
An American Austin
Came across this old car in southern Washington on a road trip a few years back. It’s a bit worn, having seen better days, but it still stands proud.
My best guess is that it’s an American Austin from the 1930s, a version of the English Austin 7 that was produced in Pennsylvania. The body of the relatively small, compact car was designed by the Russian-American industrial designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky. Its short wheel base made it a popular choice for conversion into hot rods and drag racers in the 1960s. The Packrat nameplate on the grille might refer to a customizing shop in California.
Xia-Hai City God Temple
Xia-Hai City God Temple, built in 1856, is nestled on Dihua Street in the Datong District of Taipei City. The temple hosts statues to the City God, the Chinese Cupid, and hundreds of other deities within its 152 square meters. In Chinese mythology, the City God originally protected the wall and moat of a city. Later, it became a deity who protected against natural disasters and administered to the spirits of the dead.
On the 14th day of the fifth lunar month each year, the temple hosts a City God Birthday Procession, which includes lion dances and other theatrical performances. In 1985, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior designated the temple a historical monument.
A Kyoto Scene
The Deva Gate on the left leads up to Kiyomizu-dera (Pure Water Temple), a Buddhst temple complex on the mid-slope of Mt. Otowa, in the eastern part of Kyoto. A UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, the temple was founded in 778 by Sakanoue-no-Tamuramaro. Most of the present structures were rebuilt in 1633 after a fire. Notably, the Hondo (Main Hall) and the wooden viewing stage that juts out from it were constructed without the use of nails, just the art of Japanese joinery.