My travel sketchbook: Swimming Pool at the Paradores, Ronda

My third sketch of Ronda marked something of a departure from my two views of the gorge. I had taken my sketchbook down to the hotel pool with me on the afternoon of my birthday, half expecting to capture another glimpse of the sensational hotel views over the surrounding landscape. And while I did begin to draw in a little of that landscape, I soon realised that what was exciting me most about the scene before me wasn’t the landscape at all, but the electric blue swimming pool set within a lush garden dappled with sunlight through sheltering trees. And so in something which recalls the dolce vita represented in the early LA paintings of David Hockney, I made the swimming pool of the hotel Paradores the focus of this sketch, even returning to the completed black and white work to add the same electric blue that had so entranced me. Together there is not only a striking contrast of monochrome and blue, but the very vision of a summer’s holiday afternoon. Bliss. 

Ronda Sketch 3 – Paradores Pool (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)

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