Book31

SketchBooks

"In case of loss, please return to: THAT PLACE IN YOUR HEART WHERE ALL THINGS ARE REAL"
Moleskine Sketchbook, January 2006 - June 2006

Cover of sketchbook 31: a plain black Moleskine with its elastic band, scuffed from travel

Back of sketchbook 31: a dark felt pencil roll stitched in red over a black Moleskine, four worn pencils tucked in the bottom

Sketchbook 31 spread: a hand-drawn map of Rome's rioni with the blue Tiber winding through — Trastevere, Trevi, Esquilino, the Colosseum — 'ROMA v. 842006 - 1142006 A.D.'

Sketchbook 31 spread in pencil: a jet seen from above the clouds and a sleeping fellow passenger — 'Slept. Flying out of Charleroi...'

Roma sketchbook: the Colosseum's arched wall brushed in ink with red scaffolding crosshatch, tourists reduced to black strokes — 'Colleseo'

Roma sketchbook spread 'S.P.Q.R.': ink studies of statues and angels with notes — 'It is a frightening thing when one culture supplants another... In Rome the Gods are truly dead.'

Roma sketchbook: watercolor along the Tiber in greens, and below, the column of Romulus and Remus drawn sideways amid writing about finding Bernini's tomb

Roma sketchbook: ballpoint sketch of Bernini's Cathedra Petri in St Peter's — the dove window radiating over the bronze throne and four doctors of the church — '147 popes'

Roma sketchbook: the baldachin's twisted columns brushed in heavy black ink beside writing — 'There is a certain perversity to St Peters... The angel stabs you in your own true heart'

Roma sketchbook: quick ink sketches of sculpture groups — figures wrestling above a skeleton, and a robed statue on a plinth

Roma sketchbook: pencil sketch of a roped-off monument, and in purple and brown, a Bernini angel reaching toward a draped reclining figure

Roma sketchbook: dense ink trees in the Vatican gardens under writing about tourism and dedication — 'genetics be damned in my spirals'

Roma sketchbook: a pencil reclining nude, Ovid's Latin on Daphne's transformation lettered around it, and an inked mustached portrait — 'is it possible that in Roma there can be no fantasy?'

Roma sketchbook: ink sketch of Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, her raised arms bursting into leaves as the laurel bark climbs her legs

Roma sketchbook: study of Daphne's hands sprouting laurel leaves at her fingertips, drawn in ink across the spread

Roma sketchbook: a weeping face drawn in red pencil beside a Palazzo Barberini ticket dated 10/05/2006 and postcards of Canova's Pauline Borghese and Caravaggio's Narcissus

Roma sketchbook: brush-pen sketch after Bernini's Rape of Proserpina — her raised arm and turned head, his fingers pressing into her hip

Roma sketchbook: an umbrella pine in terracotta pencil with a dark inked sculpture head resting at its base

Roma sketchbook: a gnarled old tree brushed in ink, its roots gripping the ground before an arched arcade

These were drawn on location in The Eternal City from 20060508-20060511. Michael and I went there for a good, old fashioned, vacation.

Written at the base of the Daphne
on one side:
MOLLIA.CINGVNTVR.TENVI.PREAECORDIALIBRO
IN.FRONDEM.CRINES.IN.RAMOS.BRACHIA.CRESCVNT
PES.MODO.TAM.VELOX.PIGRIS.RADICIBVS.HAERET

on the other:
QVISQVIS.AMANS.SEQVITIR.FVGITIVAE.GAVDIA.FORMAE
FRONDE.MANVS.IMPLET.BACCAS.SEV.CARPIT.AMARAS

32.

30.