It seems like a long time ago that Husb and I were in Jordan, but it was just a few weeks. I did this drawing in my sketchbook as we sat on a rocky ridge in the Wadi Rum desert waiting for the sunset, which was incredible, so beautiful, vast, silent.
Photograph by M. Williams
I prefer to sketch when I’m travelling and take very few photographs because when I look back at photos and drawings, it’s the sketches that put me back into the moment and make the memory more vivid. Here’s a quick sketch outside the UNESCO World Heritage site, Quasayr’ Amra, a desert castle in the north of Jordan, to the eaast of the capital city of Amman.
Husb and I travelled to a lot of fascinating places during our recent trip to Jordan. I did this drawing in Qusayr’ Amra, a desert castle, pleasure palace and UNESCO World Heritage site in the east of the country. It’s about 1,700 years old and it’s interior is covered in magnificent frescoes, unusually for a Moslem country because they accurately represent animals and humans. In this particular one (above), I noticed that she only has three fingers, which is very common in modern cartoons. And the use of patterns in some of the paintings (below) is very contemporary.
Husb and I camped overnight in the Wadi Rum desert last week. The colours were wonderful, so complex. I didn’t have time to do “landscape” paintings so throughout the trip I focused on capturing the colours around me with Winsor & Newton watercolours onto Somerset paper, creating my own locality pallette.
There were camels…. it was like the Lawrence of Arabia film. Wadi Rum is where he did a lot of his shenanigans.
And there were ancient petroglyphs, featuring camels.
I do some artwork when I’m travelling, but there’s no time to do completed pieces. I’m not there to carry on working but also I don’t want to miss the chance to do something creative in a new environment, so this time I decided to try and record the colours of a place, to create a pallete of local colours, using Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolours. Here’s my Dead Sea pallete, on a warm but misty day which made the land and sea look quite smudgey. I’m on a beach in Jordan, looking over to the West Bank.
More amazing stone from the city of Petra in Jordan. This reminds me of a landscape but it’s formed entirely naturally in the rock.
Husb and I have been away for a week, so I haven’t been blogging. We went to Jordan in the Middle East, a beautiful and friendly country. We visited the stone city of Petra – the stone is multi-coloured and stratified and the whole area looks like it’s covered with psychedelic works of art.
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