Abandoned Door in Aveiro Down a Forgotten Alley
2023-05-15
This watercolor is of one of Aveiro’s alleys, made on my first visit to the city, like I mentioned in the post where I ended up drawing the market square. Walking through the historic center and getting a little lost in the narrow streets, I found this door that opened onto the inside of a building where there was nothing left at all.
A lot of houses here in Portugal are like this, just facades that used to be well kept, that once sheltered a family and their stories, and now only protect the undergrowth growing inside. Many of them don’t reveal anything inside, no walls, no traces of a roof that once sheltered someone. Now they wait for their final fate in the hands of some developer who’ll turn them into tourist accommodation.
On the old wall, the highlight is the tentacles of this octopus, still clinging to it, on a wall that’ll soon stop existing altogether. When I walked past it, I sat down on the other side of the street, right on the ground, and sketched the outlines there with fineliner pens, filling it in afterward with watercolor. There was a nice breeze in the street, and people walked by curious, trying to figure out why I was drawing a wall like that one, just to keep it for myself.