LESS ICONIC MOSQUE

As we are traveling this week, I offer the following travel related drawing experience in Turkey.

We climbed a cave castle in the village of Ortahisar in Cappodocia.  From our high perch we had excellent views of the roofscape of the village below us.  There was a Mosque at the base of the castle which caught my eye.  A huge advantage of the snap a picture now and draw later approach to travel drawing is that it frees up your day.  By taking the photograph below, we were then able to continue on our jam packed day.

In my drawing, I was able to address what originally caught my eye in the first place:

-the minaret is not part of the building structure, which probably indicates that this building was originally purposed for something else, and then converted to a Mosque

-the three roof domes are commensurate with the Byzantine architectural order;  a sequence of shallow domes was used continually in their buildings

-the amazing dynamic created by the box form of the building with the minaret in complete contrast

What I did not do is go inside the Mosque.  So I do not have any sense of the structure of the building;  while I assume that Byzantine arches were employed I can’t be sure.  So that is an omission.  Yet when the Byzantines incorporated a series of domes, this it almost always over an open space below.  So we might correctly guess that the interior is a large open volume.

The fact is that if I would not have drawn this from a photograph that I took, I would not have made this drawing.  And more importantly I would not have this understanding of this building.

This photo confirms that I drew my drawing in Turkey the next morning, sitting on the terrace as the sun came over the distant hills, right after the first prayer call.

So this seems to be some sort of new travel drawing paradigm.  You must take your own photo.  You must do your drawing from your photo as soon after as is practical.  And you must do the drawing at least in the country that you took your photo.  Is this really so removed from the original experience?  Now we need a new word for this type of drawing process.   Photo primacy drawing?  Travel authenticity drawing?  Spirit drawing?