Just what is it about Italy that makes artists want to paint it? Is it the special atmosphere, the quality of light, the golden colours, or the variety of landscape that inspire us? For all artists, it can be both rewarding and frustrating trying to capture perfection. Great painting comes from raw emotion, but you don’t need to be a professional to create something that captures your feelings and records your responses to a particular scene.
Of course there are those who enjoy setting up the easel and canvas in the middle of a piazza, and creating ‘masterpieces’ for all to see, but for many, the privacy of a modest sketchbook full of doodles and paint daubs can bring back all those memories just as effectively. I know that throughout my own long-standing love affair with Italy, it is the sketches as much as the paintings which have kept my passion alive.
Simplicity and Modesty
So what should you paint? There is such an overwhelming choice of subject matter in Italy that it could well stop you from even getting your brushes out. For some, the creative urge may come from the panorama of the Tuscan countryside, or the grandeur of cities like Florence and Siena. But if you take my advice, you’ll learn to take inspiration from the simplest of subjects, such as the sparkle of light and shade in an olive grove, or the sight of someone’s washing hanging from a window. Somehow the view of washing on a Scottish tenement doesn’t have quite the same appeal! I like to work modestly within the privacy of the sketchbook, and set myself up in a quiet corner where onlookers will find it difficult to look over my shoulder.
A place I return to regularly when staying in Tuscany is Montecatini Terme which has a wealth of quiet, paintable locations surrounding it, and all within a five-minute car ride. I can be in a quiet hilltop village where tourists never tread, and paint happily all day, with only an occasional resident casting a glance at what I’m doing.
Drinking in the Atmosphere
Provided you buy the odd drink or snack, café proprietors are always happy to have an artist sitting in their pavement cafés - you may even inadvertently strike up a bartering system for free drinks. Quite often as I sketch, the locals send out some cool mineral water, a glass of local wine or home-made biscotti to sustain my strength, which seems to signify quiet approval. The drinks can do more than just quench your thirst too.
Without pulling out your entire painting kit, a pen, brush and a glass of your favourite refreshment can be sufficient to create some effective pen and wash sketches. Months after returning home,I open the sketchbook at these ‘scratch and sniff’ pictures, and smell the wonderful aroma of Italian cappuccino or espresso that has been used for diluting the ink to give me an atmospheric sketch!
In busier settings, such as the afternoon musical concerts in Montecatini’s magnificent Tettucio Spa, a quiet corner table under the shade of umbrellas gives you a perfect view of the orchestra or the dancing public - a great way to do some more people- watching - and drawing. These are the sort of places that help you to gain confidence if you are a beginner to painting, from a good vantage point you can people-watch, paint doorways and even the waiters themselves (this always goes down well with an Italian!). You also realise very quickly that most onlookers actually have the greatest admiration for you, no matter how badly your painting’s going, as they have probably never had the nerve to try it themselves!
The words ‘bello’, ‘bellissimo’ and ‘brava’, often accompanied with a pat on the back, can be all the encouragement you’ll ever need. ‘Buon Lavoro!’ When you are touring around, a pen, brush and faithful sketchbook diary (a hardback bound book of watercolour paper) is all you need to work quickly and simplify settings that are otherwise too complicated to paint. On such a day, walking around Florence I was able to capture the little skylines of the city from the Boboli Gardens, during a thunderstorm. And that’s another thing about Italy, compared to my Scottish surroundings. Over there when it rains it’s such an exciting event as it suddenly pours down, bounces off the pavements, creating rivers within seconds that gush along the roadside and people rush around dashing for cover. It stops as quickly as it starts and seems much more exciting and animated than Scottish rain.
Italians also have the classiest ranges of umbrellas I have ever seen, and must surely hope for occasional showers just for the opportunity to show them off! This love affair for all things Italian follows me home each time, and for months after, I am rendered incapable by the supermarket smells of fresh basil and Italian coffee, as I count the weeks or months until my next visit. My salvation is my painting, and back at the studio, the faithful sketchbook, bursting with painting ideas, keeps the momentum going as I work on Italian-inspired themes. It can do the same for you too, and the effort that has gone into capturing a scene on paper means more than the best photograph, because you created it yourself.
You’ll remember the smells, the tastes, the way the sunlight caught the leaves in the piazza, that conversation with the waiter, the glass of wine on the house ‘because you are an artist’... So if you enjoyed art at school, but never got the chance to pursue it further because ‘life’ got in the way, think about it next time you are in Italy and get your sketchbook out. You never know, maybe I’ll see you quietly working in a café somewhere, and whisper ‘Happy Painting’ or ‘buon lavoro’ as the Italians do. I might even send you a drink!
