The Parque São Roque Labyrinth and the Ramos Pinto Tiles
2023-03-04
At the last meetup of @posk_porto_urbansketchers at Parque São Roque, gathering number 113, everyone was admiring the festival’s century old camellias. I found myself watching the green of the labyrinth and the kids playing.
They ran wild through the labyrinth, in and out of the neatly trimmed hedges around the pillory, long forgotten its old job of punishing people. Pure joy, for kids who these days mostly grow up locked inside apartments, quite a contrast with that dark past.
I sat there for a good while, just sketching that back and forth. The festival’s camellias were everywhere, in every color, but what really caught my eye was that game of hide and seek along the green paths of the labyrinth. That ended up being the main subject of my morning.
The Azulejos at Casa Ramos Pinto
That same PoSK meetup also gave me the drawing of the azulejos from Casa São Roque, home to the museum and to the park itself. The patterns remind me so much of the illustrations I used to see on old Port wine ads, the ones made by the family who once owned the house, the Ramos Pinto family.
Inside, the house is beautiful, and surprisingly modest for the standards of Portugal’s rich back then. So here’s the record of that first visit.
The ornament on the corner of the house and the cherubs on the tiles were my focus that day. A small detail, easy to miss, but full of history to tell. These azulejos at Casa São Roque hold that kind of detail you only notice up close. What drew me in was how they’re less blue than the azulejos you see all over Porto. Two sketches, one same meetup, the green of the labyrinth’s leaves and the ochre of the house sharing the afternoon.
About the Materials
I had my sketchbook with aged kraft paper pages. I’d bought it in Braga, at the Bracara Romana festival. It’s paper that already carries that color of time, that feel of something old. And it goes so well with my watercolors, I really need to find another sketchbook like it.
I used grey and black fineliner pens for a quicker sketch, sitting right there in the garden. Then came the watercolor, finishing it off perfectly with those ochre tones from the aged paper. Almost like the drawing was born already carrying its age.