My travel sketchbook: Capri 1– Roof of the Church of Santo Stefano

Being as the island of Capri is not exactly short of a tourist or two, and seeing as the prices which a café there can evidently get away with are sky high, you can understand why the cafés packed into the little Piazzetta at the centre of Capri Town are keen to do a quick turnaround of customers. After all, at nearly €10 a pop for a glass of wine or something similar, why would they not want to churn out the customers like a supermarket conveyer belt? So there must have been some extent of vexation for the waiters of one such café located directly beneath the square’s famous ceramic-faced campanile when I sat down at the café table and, after ordering myself a coffee, proceeded to open up my travel sketchbook and start sketching. Fearing no doubt that I would be there all day on the price of one coffee, I could almost feel their frustrated eyes burning into the back of my head as I began to sketch. And yet how could I do otherwise? After all, Capri is undoubtedly a place of beauty, and in the centre of its small capital city, the architecture is so cutely quaint that it feels a bit like Toytown. In particular, I adored the rooftop of the church of Santo Stefano, whose small little domes and white-washed walls captivated me from our first steps in the town. And it was those which I sat down to sketch at that little front line café table.

Capri Sketch 1: Roof of the church of Santo Stefano (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

The waiters needn’t have been worried however. As ever with my impromptu sketches made in pen, I wasn’t working on this for long, and in fact had to leave said café before the sketch was completely finished owing to the fast approaching time of the last ferry back to Positano. And yet I’m glad I risked their wrath for the short time I did, because this is definitely one of my favourite sketches of the holiday.

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