Scribbling .. and connecting with Cy Twombly

I had fun recently, scribbling away, testing pens, felt tips, coloured pencils, some of dubious quality,  and sharpening pencils at record breaking speed with  my newly acquired battery  powered sharpener.

A couple of sheets of satisfying  scribble  resulted.

A friend had mentioned the American artist Cy Twombly, whose work is,  to be polite, beyond my understanding  and  I commented  that this may be how he made some of  his work.  But joking apart, I recalled reading that he had lived for periods of time in Italy in a small town called Bassano in Teverina, an hour or so away from Rome where we spent a holiday, 7 years ago, staying  in a very old house full of character.  I  tried at that time  to find out where it was that Cy Twombly  had been living, but I never knew found out exactly where, or indeed if he had ever lived there.  But now, with  time to look back at photos, sketch books etc, and doing  a bit of research with a view to appreciating  his work, as some obviously do,  I finally located a photo of the Palazzo which he had owned and renovated, and where he produced  a lot of his work, some of which I have found a little more interesting, and possibly even inspiring. The massive old building looked familiar, and we had indeed passed it on walks.

We'd been given use of  a swimming pool in a  large garden, which was  a  20 minute walk from the house where we were staying, descending the cobbled streets of the town and meandering along pine tree lined paths. I spent a couple of afternoons sketching and painting the scene from the poolside but I didn't know then  that I had unwittingly drawn the back view of Cy's house - with its three arched tower.  This  revelation is almost as exciting to me  as my newly discovered electric sharpener. 
I'm no closer in understanding his work but for some reason am now becoming more intrigued by it and I feel it may lead me to explore different ways of working,but hopefully something other than  just  scribbling!

Bassano in Teverina

Italian fountains - also on stamps, and appearing in special commissions!

Although we had plenty of maps, it seems as though we got lost on a daily basis in Naples, but  it had its compensations!  On a circuitous route to the docks to catch a ferry, we came across this beautiful fountain, the Immacolatella,otherwise known as the Fountain of the Giant,  and I recognised it  as being on an Italian stamp I'd incorporated into a stamp collage commission last year.
The recipient was being taken on a surprise trip to Naples for a significant birthday, and I included it in the flag of Uganda as the brief was to include significant places and interests in the flag!
The fountain,  designed by Michaelangelo Naccherino and Pietro Bernini in the 17th century and now  stands near the Castel d'Ovo on the coast.  The Fountain of the Giant in Naples  is in a beautiful location, but is suffering from neglect and could certainly do with some TLC and more publicity.

A series of stamps was issued in 1973 depicting fountains including these three in Naples, Rome and Palermo.

Fontana della Immacolatella, or Fountain of the Giant, in Naples

The Leaning tower of Pisa stamp collage

On 30th January, I mentioned that I had started to make a picture os the Leaning Tower of Pisa. My theory is that if I tell someone I've started, it puts a little bit more pressure on me to complete the task! Well, six weeks later, I've finally finished this one. Quite a lot of searching around for little figures to include in the foreground and on bell tower level.  I also got rather obsessed with trying to include Galileo in the picture as he was born in Pisa and there are many stories relating to his experiments in which he is said to have dropped objects of different weights from the top of the tower to prove that they would land at the same time. There is nothing in his own writings to prove that he ever did this, but it makes a good story!

Galileo Galilei was commemmorated on an Italian stamp of 1933 - and his portrait appears on the tower.  See if you can spot him.

Another set of stamps was issued in September 1942 to commemmorate the Death Tercentenary of Galileo.  Such a beautiful set of stamps, in perfect condition in my own collection that I didn't have the heart to cut them up!
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Instead, here's a picture of the four stamps featuring different events in the life of Galileo.
The tower itself is made from carefully cut pages of an old Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue.