My last day in Italy for this trip was spent in Vicenza – partly doing work and going out for two brief sketching sessions (one at lunchtime and one before dinner).

Part of my work was packing up and shipping home 6.5kg of paper – my first 6 sketchbooks, my Palladian Odyssey teaching folders and some other documents. I’m happy to report that the box has safely arrived in Sydney.

Lunch and a few purchases (and a Palladian Palazzo!)

A visit to the Palladian Museum.

This is what I wrote at the time on Instagram:

I personally think that perfect perspective is a little overrated.

It is definitely important to understand perspective and get your lines going the right direction but there is so much more to creating a lively sketch of architecture.

This is my fun sketch of the Palladian Museum which is housed in a beautiful and richly decorated palazzo by the great man.

I just allowed myself to explore the structure, proportions, details and colours of this magnificent building without worrying if my angles were perfect.

Photos of more purchases – a great little book on Palladio by James Ackerman. I have an old copy at home, and a version on my kindle, but I just wanted a new one from the Palladian Museum. And I got another Loving Palladio pendant (this represents one bay of the Basilica.)

Just before dinner, I spent a little time in the main piazza sketching Basilica Palladiana again.

It’s such a grand building – a facade surrounding a medieval tribune hall (not a church) – and it’s a massive part of the life of the town.

It’s a stunningly beautiful building but one that is very hard to sketch. But as it was my last evening I decided to do the hard foreshortened view of it. I started using De Atramentis document Urban Grey in my Sailor Fude pen but I ran out of ink. So I had to switch to black.

And here are two detail sketches I did immediately afterwards.

If you are wondering about the swatches in the bottom right corner… they are some more Aquarius watercolour paints which I swapped into my palette. I actually met up with Roman Szmal briefly that morning (he was in the area for a meeting) and he gave me some more paints. I’ve been doing a lot of testing this trip but haven’t made any definitive changes to my palette yet.

And finally, here is my last view of Vicenza as I headed to the airport the next morning.

Vicenza is my favourite town in Italy. I describe to it as ‘elegant chill’ and the Palladian buildings are a big part of that. There are hardly any tourists there and I always feel as if I am just hanging out with the locals.

It was sad to leave and I can’t wait to return to it next year!

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