Impressions of Italy: Broken Arrow Skies

Our first ever trip to Italy. We landed in Rome on a blistering hot day in early July. Then we spent time in Tuscany, Venice and Florence. I sketched. A lot. Too much to blog all of it. So here, in a few posts, are some things that struck me.

Those skies: the shape of them as seen from narrow lanes. Say ‘sky’ and I think vast, endless, horizontal expanse, perhaps broken by the silhouettes of buildings and trees in the distance. But when viewed from narrow alleys, that sky turns into this active, jagged broken arrow shape, a lightning bolt headed down to the horizon. Sometimes I made a sketch just to record that broken arrow sky shape I loved.

Here is the view from the window in our apartment in Rome not far from the Spanish Steps. Just an alley, buildings, and that sky…

Yet another time I stopped in the middle of my rambling through the city, to draw this.

Not quite broken arrow shaped, but that sky is why I noticed this narrow space while waiting (forever!) outside the Uffizi in Florence.

And outside the Accademia, this artist worked away with that lightning bolt of a sky behind him.

In the steep medieval hilltown of Montepulciano, I sketched these two scenes. Too bad my supply of premixed dark brown ink ( DeAtramentis document blue and brown) ran out in the middle of the trip: it was perfect for those old buildings. This first scene was right outside our hotel and the next one, a hundred feet up the road.