HAGIA SOPHIA 2
When traveling, sometimes you become so captivated because of the beauty of what you are looking at that you simply have to stop and sketch. This was one of them. Although I will confess that I did not have to stoop down in some doorway to find an out of the way place to sketch. Besides the sidewalks of Istanbul are very crowded. This view was from the rooftop of our hotel in Istanbul. For those of you out there who insist that all sketching has to be done from real life and not from photos, this is for you.
Nevertheless, once you start drawing transparently, you can’t stop. So I was able to give some sense of transparency to the forms, even though I was operating in a more or less representational mode.
Robert submitted an interesting link regarding Hagia Sophia. What I think is really amazing is that the authors created a computer program to basically draw the basic parti of Hagia Sophia by entering simple dimensions. I was joking that before I took the time to fully understand the structure of the building by making a Transparent Drawing, I could not of told you how it works to save my life. Now, alas, if we as a civilization forget how this building works, thank goodness we have a computer program to do it for us.