playing with pencil

Lately I've gone back to basics with my sketching, working only in pencil. My goal is to focus on value, to practice with light and shadow. I feel that my drawings and paintings need a lot more contrast.



Now this surprised looking fellow above is not a study in value, but a quick note of the fresco of St. Theodore from the Chapel of St. Basil in Göreme. I wasn't allowed to take a photograph of his wonderful expression, so I stood among the circulating horde of tourists and did my best to capture it.



One of the subjects I tend to run away from drawing or painting is moving water. Here I've tried to get a sense of the crashing waves of the Atlantic, somewhere on the coast of Portugal. It's not that great, but I like the waves in the lower right side. I'm forever telling my students to face their challenges and work through them, and it's time I took my own advice.

Must keep practicing!

more sketches of anatolia

From the giant heads of Mount Nemrut, to the Mesopotamian plains of Mardin.

becoming strangers

It was as though the wind had lost its patience with us, and from its dusty mouth a hot moan crept through the streets, turning the sky from white to a sickly orange.



I bought a string of chilies so sharp and fragrant— their red was on fire in the strange light that washed Istiklal yellow, and in that yellow, I suddenly noticed how the kemençe player's hair had turned from brown to white.



I realised I had become strangers with the city I once loved.

thirty-six

night fell on avanos

the monk's valley

Like pious monks in peaked caps, rushing off to vespers.

the rose valley

Even though at times it felt like we were hiking on another planet without a soul in sight, it was inevitable that we would run into someone selling çay— after all, even the volcanoes in Turkey have a çaycı. This man had something even better: fresh pressed pomegranate juice, and a cave church.



The Haçlı Kilise is home to some fine 9th Century frescoes and a large cross carved into its stone ceiling. Unfortunately, like many of the early Christian frescoes across Turkey, the faces within reach have been scratched out, though you can still make out some sideways glances and stern expressions.



Actually, this was one of the better preserved churches outside of the Göreme Open Air Museum, and the artists' choice to use a malachite green for parts of the background made it quite special.



On our loop back to where we left our car, an unassuming pointed rock with a rickety wooden foot bridge promised something interesting inside. There was a green mashallah in Arabic script with simple botanical patterns decorating the pigeons' entrances to the cave.



Carved straight out of the rock itself, the Kolonlu Kilise is truly impressive. That high vaulted ceiling supported by all those columns... I am still at a loss for words.



Here I felt I had been swallowed by a whale, its ribs expanding and contracting above my head:

the red valley

secrets hidden in caves

The Göreme Open Air Museum has some of the loveliest cave churches in Cappadocia; two of the most famous being the Elmalı Kilise, or Apple Church (pictured above), and the Karanlık Kilise, the Dark Church (below). The vivid frescoes of the Apple Church date back to the 11th and 12th Centuries, and the intense, highly detailed scenes depicted in the Dark Church were painted during the end of the 12th Century. Imagine a small gathering of people in these spaces, worshiping under the stern gazes of saints illuminated by candlelight— imagine the artists and the architects carving arches and columns out of stone, painting in the little light that a cave allows.



Waves of tourists from all corners of the globe look up at those same saints, now bathed in electric light.