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.
To own one of my series of silkscreen portraits celebrating great but often neglected women artists please click the image.
To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.
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