SAN MARCO, VENICE IN 1976

San Marco Façade, Venice, 9 x 12 inch ink drawing by George C Clark   AVAILABLE

Here's a real blast from the past!  I recently found this little drawing in an old file I hadn't opened on decades.  It was originally a page from the book of heavy Canson paper in which I began my series of on-site "Traveler's Sketchbook" watercolors when my wife and I were touring Europe by train in the late summer and fall of 1976.  The watercolors I did on that trip are mostly long since sold, but in those early days  I was only showing watercolor paintings in my exhibitions and this drawing got filed away never exhibited.  Ten years later I began working sometimes in the medium of ink and watercolor for this series.  In the last decade as my mobility has declined I have begun doing ink drawings on-site and adding color at home, or sometimes exhibiting the ink drawings without color. 

For this drawing I did the light linework with a Rapidograph technical drawing pen with a no.1 or no. 0 point.  The heavy blacks were added with a Sharpie felt-tip pen.  I just looked at a blown-up map of the Piazza San Marco to determine that I did the drawing at one of the outermost tables of the Caffe Quadri's outdoor seating.   This Caffe has been there since the 18th Century.  It was expensive in 1976 and I understand the prices are even more outrageous today.  However, I got a real kick out of sipping Campari-and-sodas at an establishment previously patronized by Casanova,  William Dean Howells, Richard Wagner, Thomas Mann and Federico Fellini.