From the 5th to 8th of June I attended the Urban Sketchers workshop in Naples "Naples Inventory - Collect the City" guided by tutors Simo Capecchi, Caroline Peyron, Nina Johansson, and Federico Gemma. This was attended by more that 30 participants from 11 different countries. It was a great experience and I am very grateful to the tutors and my fellow sketchers for making it such a fun and inspiring few days.
Day 1:
We met at Museo Nitsch on the morning of day 1. Although we didn't tour the Museum - it was used as a venue for the introductory talk and demonstration, the place itself made an impression just walking through it to get to the meeting room. Herman Nitsch's work is an assault on the senses both visual and auditory. There were photographs and videos of his performance pieces involving ritual, blood and animal offal being poured and rubbed onto the bodies of the participants. The ritual elements seem to recall the Passion of Christ and other religious imagery. The soundtrack that could be heard was also quite disturbing.
After being introduced to the tutors we divided into two groups for a demonstration. I followed the demonstration with Federico Gemma. He is a very skilled watercolorist and so this was useful for me as I have very little experience with watercolours and find them hard to handle. Federico demonstrated starting with neutral washes to build up the shadows gradually before moving on to any stronger colours.
From here we made our way to the Museo do Capodimonte. In the late morning we positioned ourselves around the Fontana di Belvedere in the Parco do Capodimonte. This is where we started to sketch. I was quite nervous again about drawing in public especially as there were a number of professional artists and also architects in the group whose graphic skills were far superior to my own. I soon relaxed though and got absorbed in what I was doing but my first few sketches are very wobbly.
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| Ink and Wash Drawings: Fontana di Belvedere, Parco Di Capodimonte |
Federico also gave us some more tips on watercolours - specifically on various ways of mixing greens.
We had a delicious picnic lunch provided by SlowLina - a slow food caterer which was really very special.
The afternoon session was led by Caroline Peyron. She had managed to get special permission for us to go into the restoration area of the Museum. The theme of the afternoon was "Order and Disorder". This was inspired by two aspects. the first was how we tend to choose what we draw based on beauty and order so to counter this we were taken into the disordered environment of the laboratorio where priceless works of art are restored but it is a working environment which is dirty, dusty and cluttered. We would then be faced with a contrast of 'order' when we moved up into the museum itself later.
Caroline was also inspired by Proust's 'Paperolles'. Marcel Proust when writing would often want to add ideas or tracts of writing to existing pieces of text. He would at these on pieces of paper which he folded into the area he was working on (see photograph below)
Our task was to select and draw in the laboratorio directly into our sketchbooks ('disorder'). we would then overlay these drawings with drawings created later in the museum ('order'). The overlaid drawings were to be made on tracing paper or acetate and we should also try to rate the overlaid daring to the one underneath in some way. The 'order' drawings were created in the elaborate ballroom of the Pallazzo.
I found this a very interesting exercise. Unfortunately by late afternoon I was very tired and had a banging headache so I only produced one drawing which I was reasonably happy with ('order and disorder' below) But I liked this idea of overlaying drawings and will use this again in the future.
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| "Order and Disorder" |
Day 2:
Day two started at the Zoological Museum under the guidance of Federico Gemma. Federico is a wildlife artist and illustrator as well as having a degree in Zoology. He is a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists in the UK. He was able to pass on some of his wisdom to us. As you can imagine, being all about animals this was right up my street!
Our task was to make 8 drawings in different media of the specimens in the museum. Although the animals in the museum were stuffed, the drawings seem to somehow make them look more alive. Federico on the other hand usually draws from life and described the process of rapid sketching. He has to try to record what he sees in the minimum possible number of lines/strokes and keep what he has seen in his visual memory for a short time while he continues to draw as his subjects are constantly on the move.
Also at the zoological museum was a small exhibition put on by Franco Lancio Click Here to Link to his Website. The exhibition was of a bird a butterfly and a fish. All of these were constructed from found items which were picked up on a beach on a Greek Island. The pieces were transported back to Italy in empty tzatziki boxes. These creatures were charming and I particularly liked the description of their conception and construction. "When I found them they were in pieces - I gathered them up, took care of them and put them back together" - I found it quite touching!
In the afternoon we went to the National Archeological Museum. We were extremely privileged to be given the opportunity to visit the deposit where items not on display are stored. The afternoon was again led by Caroline Peyron under the theme of "order and disorder" - disorder being the deposit in which there are shelves and shelves of Roman busts. Statues are crammed in higgledy-piggledy and not arranged for viewing. Unfortunately I only had one sheet of tracing paper so was only able to fulfil the brief on one page of my sketchbook but I enjoyed continuing to sketch nevertheless.
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| Layered drawing 'Order and Disorder' - the underlying ink drawing is of the multitude of busts in the deposit. I have superimposed imaged of statues of the female body so the busts seem to have a voyeuristic effect. |
Day 3:
Day 3 started at the Cimiterio Delle Fontanelle under the Guidance of Simo Capecchi. The cemetery is a very interesting place. It is in the remains of an old quarry and contains the remains of thousands of victims of the plague and cholera. When these epidemics were rife there were so many people dying that it was impossible to bury them all in the existing cemeteries so the remains were put into the quarry. This is a large and dark cavernous space lined on all its walls by piles and piles of skulls and bones.
A cult grew up around this in which people would go to the cemetery to and 'adopt' a skull. They would pay their respects to the skull, clean it, build it a little house/shrine and offer it gifts. Sometimes they would even name the skull (they thought they were giving it back its living name which came to them in a dream). This would be done in the hope of gaining favour - for example the winning lottery numbers(!) or recovery from an illness. In 1969 the cemetery was closed on request of the Catholic church as the practice was a superstition and, therefore frowned upon by the religion.
Recently, after protests from local residents who want to bring tourists to this relatively deprived area of Naples, the cemetery was re-opened to the public.
Our theme for this morning was "One and Many" based on the fact that from all the numerous skulls in the cemetery each devotee would choose only one on which to lavish their attention. So we were to choose one item to be the 'hero' of our drawing and then emphasise the plural nature of the many other surrounding objects.
In my first drawing I emphasised one of the crucifixes which was silhouetted against a light window and this was contrasted against the massive pile of skulls beneath it. In hindsight I should have made the inside of the cemetery much darker and carried this down onto the second page to better link the two pages together and to emphasise the contrast between interior and exterior. I found it quite difficult to draw in the dark environment of the quarry.
For the second drawing I moved to a better lit area. Here I chose one of the skulls to render in colour because it had a green deposit on it. I hoped that the colour would make this individual stand out against the background of the remaining skulls drawn in graphite. On the facing page you can see fragments of funeral posters which are displayed on notice boards when a person dies in this area. These are put up to show respect to the dead. These are fragments of peeling posters I picked up around Naples to juxtapose against the anonymous remains of the fontanelle cemetery.
In the third drawing I tried to show the scale of this great cavern. I wasn't particularly happy with this drawing as perspective and straight lines are still proving problematic.
In the afternoon we walked up to the Funicolare Montesanto station and under the guidance of Nina Johansson we sketched around this busy area of Naples. We were meant to try out three different ways of arranging the sketchbook page. Unfortunately I got inundated by small chatterbox children who wanted to join in with the drawing so I didn't have a very productive afternoon.
Later in the afternoon we went up onto the balcony of the station and drew from an elevated position. I avoided the architecture and decided to do a quick sketch of a couple of guys lounging on their Vespas and chatting.
Day 4:
An enjoyable morning in the Quartieri Spagnoli searching out the street are of Cyop e Kaf. I have never ventured into the quarter Spagnoli before. This rabbit-warren of streets is usually a very frenetic place and it is vey easy to get confused and lost in these streets. Given that this was a Sunday the streets were not so crazy as usual and were were able to move freely through the streets. Cyop and Kaf work predominantly in this zone of the city. The people of the area have taken them to their hearts and now they are requested to paint doors throughout the area. Their images are in bright primary colours with bizarre-looking humanoid creatures and contain themes and messages which I assume would become clearer on seeing a larger number of the works. They have also undertaken a number of other projects including a film called "il segreto"(The secret) which recounts the rite of the 'cippo do Sant'Antonio'. Local boys from the quarteri after New Year go around collecting wood (especially discarded Christmas trees) and hiding it. In mid January their aim is to make the biggest fire possible. Cyop e Kaf followed the kids around and filmed them going about this secretive activity. They have also created a book which contains an oral history of this zone recounted by local residents.
In the first drawing I have tried to show the street art in relation to its environment by taking frottage from the wall adjacent to the work. I have also sprayed on the other graffiti that was around it using a needle and syringe.
In the second drawing I have just made a study of one of the works which is called 'Scatenati' which means unchained but also has the connotation of crazy. I used watercolour very boldly for this. However, there were also a number of other graffitis scrawled over the painting in chalk and white paint so I used a wax resist to represent these. I really like the bold colours and composition of this.
In the afternoon we went into the gardens of the Palazzo Reale opposite Piazza Plebiscito in the centre of Naples. This was the end of the Workshop. I hung around and did a half-hearted sketch from this raised viewpoint but I found I was exhausted after a very active few days so didn't stay for the whole afternoon.
The workshop was a fantastic experience. I learnt more about Naples in those four days than I had in the preceding 7 years living nearby! My favourite part was the fact that we were all obliged to show our sketches to the group after each session so I got to see some very inspiring work and to see what a great variety of approaches the same exercises could produce. I will certainly return again to another Urban Sketchers Workshop. I also hope to keep in touch with many of the people I met and hopefully continue to participate in sketching sessions in Naples with fellow enthusiasts.
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