As I pull up from the shelves some of my old sketch books and start flipping the pages, inevitably my mind starts to travel back to all those places and states of mind. That’s a good thing, I think to myself, even a two minute sketch can bring so many memories! That is the whole purpose of it. What brought me to that place, how did I get there, who was I with, was it a moment of happiness? Was I concentrated or trying to distract myself, had I just eaten the weirdest food or would I face a distressing situation a few hours later?
Slideshow above: YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, California, 2017. Black Felt Pen. Drawing nature’s architecture. The majestic granite rocks emerge from the ground like a natural construction.
Grasping again the smells, the temperature, the mindset, is somehow like wandering inside an archeological museum of yourself. One can build a map and a chronology of physical movements and self-consciousness. It’s a kind of intimate mapping of which the geography doesn’t necessarily match that of the physical world, although it can also be based on it.
SAÜL – French Guyana 1999. Black Pilot Pen
Trying to depict the textures of the Amazonian Forest. As the humid hot air makes breathing hard, the eye is filled with thousands of details. The leaves on the trees vibrate in the soft wind, birds sing, monkeys howl, insects buzz…There is no silence in the tropical forest.
SAÜL – French Guyana 1999. Black Pilot Pen
The far reaching hand of god…Deep in the Amazonian forest, a tiny wooden church for a congregation of a few hundred.
PLAGE DE MONTABO, CAYENNE – French Guyana 1999. Black Pilot Pen
Stretching, empty and calm beaches. The brownish sea, full of river deposits coming from the forests inside the country.
”Maybe after swimming I’ll have a beer and make another drawing…”
And this is definitely beneficial! It helps clean up the blur and the fogginess that time and memory tends to spread over past events. It is a register like taking notes or recording sounds and voices.
One might fall into the temptation of going to the internet and check how those places look like today. There is a difference and probably the difference is you, who is not the same. And this is the beauty of it.
TOFO BEACH, Mozambique, 2003. Black Pilot Pen.
A quick sketch registers what the eyes see, the notes helps putting it in context:
” (…) all squeezzed up, with the smell of sweat and of the things people carry along. Several days in Tofo… A huge beach shaped in a bay. Very few people. The Indian Ocean has many faces: in Xai-Xai it was very strong with large disordered waves; in Tofo, also strong but less dangerous and here, at the Benguera Island (Bazaruto Archipelago), it is calm as a lake, transparent in the colors of paradise.”
INHAMBANE, Mozambique, 2003. Black Pilot Pen.
An old mosque built in 1842. The small building is surprisingly similar to the Catholic churches built by the Portuguese.
Hybrids and contaminations like this are usually fruit of peaceful coexistence.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
“Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers.”
Heraclitus of Ephesus
For more posts on Hand and Urban Sketching see: The Sektch Virus, Oh Istanbul, El Cuaderno de Viajes (I) and El Cuaderno de Viajes (II).
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Enviado do meu iPhone
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Obrigado, arquitecto!!
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Very nice! Good memories!
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We’re together in so many good ones!!
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