My travel sketchbook: Marbella de la Encarnacion

As may have become obvious from my last two posts featuring my spot of summertime DIY, I have recently spent some quality time in the town I am very lucky to call my second home – Marbella in Southern Spain. Despite the fact that the white washed cobbled streets, the charmingly authentic squares, and the alleyways full of geraniums and plant pots and old gossiping locals have all become very familiar to me, I cannot help but be inspired by their quaint beauty on each of my many visits to the town. And since this summer, back in Dubrovnik, I started dedicating my artistic energies to capturing a place in my travel sketchbook, I felt it only apt that I take my sketchbook out into the old town of Marbella, to immortalise the town I love most in all the world.

The view I chose to create is the view which I can see from one of my favourite benches in Marbella’s old town. Set nestled between two leafy orange trees, this bench is where my partner and I love to sit and while away long balmy summer evenings, listening to the relaxed bustle of restaurants nearby. But best of all, we get to gaze upon the wonder of Marbella’s Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Encarnacion – in other words the town’s main church, an architectural mix of classical grandeur, moorish sumptuousness, and baroque excesses, and nothing shows that mix of styles better than the churches grand doorway, which is what I have attempted to capture in this sketch.

Doorway of Marbella’s Iglesia Encarnacion (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

I accept that the sketch is a bit wobbly in parts, but that’s what you get when sketching in the open, a book resting on your knee, while drawing in unforgiving, unerasable pen – but altogether I love this sketch. For it perfectly captures the imposing grandeur of one of my favourite Marbella views, and the moment in which I sketched it.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. For more information on the work of Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, head to his art website at www.delacy-brown.com