Summer memories

I love collecting memorabilia from the beach over the summer months. I remember  collecting all sorts of pebbles, wood sticks, roots, shells and whatever I could find on the seaside when I was young. But really never got to use any of these things, they used to end up in the bin as soon as we were back home from the holidays.

This year I decided I would make something to remember the summer days we spent in Italy. I collected some halved cane sticks from our favourite beach in Roccelletta (Calabria, Southern Italy). I cleaned them from all the sand and cut them to the same length leaving some rough edges.  I had already bought one of those deep frames from Ikea from the bargain corner a while ago, which hadn’t found any use, so far. I glued the sticks to a cut-to-size 300g cream paper which G brought me from paper source and used a 2B pencil to write some text at the bottom.

I haven’t found a place on the wall for it yet, but I already like the idea of looking at it during the next winter months and remember the sunny days we spent relaxing on the beach.

Summer sketches – Part 2





Here is another batch of sketches done in Pescina (L’Aquila). It has been very hot during the past week, and was almost impossible to stay outside during the day because of the heat….got sunburnt one morning at 10am while sketching under the sun! Best time was in the evening around 8pm when the sun was setting behing the mountains, the colours were magnificent…not very well captured in the sketches above 🙁

Summer sketches – Part 1



We are finally off to Italy for a well deserved summer break! First stop is Pescina, up on the mountains of Abruzzo, in central Italy, to visit my partner’s family.
The town is in the middle of what used to be a lake, il Fucino, drained in 1875. Nowadays it’s a patchwork of cultivated land surrounded by the Sirente-Velino and Vallelonga mountains.

Trip to Calabria, Italy

Building in front of the Calabro-Lucana station

The harbour seen from Corace

Gulf of Squillace

La Tonnina

Sketches from my recent trip to Catanzaro Lido, southern Italy.