Rua Augusta in Lisbon, a Watercolor and Cold Beer
2023-07-28
This watercolor is of Rua Augusta, in Lisbon. No, no resemblance to its São Paulo namesake, the one that used to light up the nightlife there and has so many stories of its own. Here the story is different, the mood is different too.
There’s the daily back and forth of thousands of tourists filling the street, photographing everything in sight. As for the differences, the heat and the sun of a wildly busy Lisbon. As for what’s similar, the cold beer.
On this corner, a cool little hotel, with that hipster feel so common around the city. Tourists come out dragging their suitcases toward the next stop, on their quick passes through different cities. Everything moves so fast that they barely get to know the places they pass through.
We really like, on our trips, to live a bit of the everyday life of a city. To actually understand how it runs, to know its problems and its good sides too.
This post, like the previous one, was originally made on Instagram, with a completely disconnected caption, because, well… they only care about the #hashtags anyway. Those social networks killed people’s will to read and genuinely interact.
There’s something interesting about how I made this one. I didn’t use the thicker black lines from my brush pen, the one I usually reach for to finish a piece. I only sketched it in grey pen, then painted and finished it with watercolor alone.
I did it all right there, sitting at the bar across from the hotel, on an afternoon that was scorching hot. That’s why we decided to stay put, with a cold beer for company. Or a few, actually.