City day, and the most businesslike day of the whole trip. Como sits at the bottom of its arm of the lake looking very pleased with itself, and it has earned it: this is the town that dressed the world. For a couple of centuries Como silk went out to the fashion houses of Paris and Milan, and the city still carries itself like a place that knows the difference between made and manufactured.
Which is exactly why I was here. Today’s main event was an appointment in Cantù, just inland, with a silk printing house, to talk about what my ink work would look like printed on silk. Black line on flowing fabric… movement drawn onto a material that actually moves. I brought the iPad portfolio and the printed samples, they brought a century of knowing what silk can and cannot do, and I left with a head full of possibilities and a very careful list of numbers to think about. Watch this space. Say nothing. Touch wood.
Cantù itself built its name on lace and fine furniture… whole dynasties of makers, wood and thread instead of paint and marble. I have a soft spot for towns whose famous artists worked in trades. It keeps the word “artist” honest, and it made it the least intimidating business meeting I have ever walked into.
The camera did the heavy lifting today: sixty-two photos. Doorways, facades, ironwork, the cathedral’s stonework, shadows falling down shutters at two in the afternoon. This is the boring, unglamorous middle of an art trip, the bit nobody posts about… you are basically a librarian with sore feet, stocking shelves for the year of studio work ahead. Every ink drawing I sell next year will have a little bit of this footage in its bones somewhere.
No sketch pages worth showing today, and I refuse to apologise. Some days are input days. If you draw every day but never fill the tank, you end up drawing your own drawings, and I have seen enough of that (in myself, to be clear) to know the warning signs.
One more day at the lake, and I have saved a good one: a village across the water, a castle above it, and apparently… an owl. See you tomorrow.
Sunday was meant to be a rest day. Instead: a red train over the Alps, a walk through a century of melting ice, and two donkeys with the best address in Switzerland.
A sketching day in Varenna on Lake Como. Train up, walking trail through the olive trees to Castello di Vezio, eagle owls at close range, then gesture studies on the ferry pier as the lake week wraps up.
A day of sketching in Chiavenna and Piuro, the alpine town buried by a landslide in 1618. Mossy alleys, soapstone workshops, green-glass river water, and evening pages turning gathered photos into working ink drawings.
