Parque das Virtudes in a Non-Touristy Watercolor
2024-04-23
Looking for non-touristy landscapes.
This watercolor is of one of the parks here in Porto, Parque das Virtudes. I went there for a meetup with the Árvore cooperative, all of us out looking for spots to draw around the place.
So what caught my eye? The rain drain, tucked in a corner of one of the park’s plateaus. No postcard views here, no pretty facade for a photo.
Sorry to anyone who only has eyes for a city’s tourist spots, those perfect-view places, almost a postcard that gets copied over and over, every single day. I’m the type who goes looking for the unusual spots instead, the ones the city and its people have half forgotten.
A common drain, in a whole plateau still left to explore
This drain was just sitting there, surrounded by leaves against a stone wall that already carried its own texture, like a signature written by the stones themselves. I found it beautiful, how the damp and time had drawn their own pattern there, without asking anyone’s permission. Those are the small details that really pull me in at a park, way more than the main path or that lookout point every tourist crowds into.
Parque das Virtudes has plateaus just like that, at different levels, stepping down almost all the way to the Douro. Each one holds corners that most people walk right past without noticing. There was this calm little sound coming from the water running slowly, which helped settle the whole scene while I drew.
I sat down there with my sketchbook, laid down the quick line with a brush pen, then moved into watercolor, letting the colors blend a bit over the stones to get that more organic feel, almost like the damp itself had painted it.
A little while later, it was done. One more record of these corners I keep hunting for, here in Porto or in any other city I visit with a sketchbook in hand.