[Javier de Blas in Abrantes, Portugal] Eduardo Salavisa is organizing
for the first year Cadernos de Viagem de Abrantes (Abrantes Travel
Sketchbooks ). I have been invited, in this edition, to draw the city
for a week.
04/27/2016
The director of the municipal library, Francisco Lopes, my mentor in Abrantes, takes us to his village. Pego extends, as few other towns, in the vicinity by Abrantes. We walk around and I draw him while he is explaining to my wife that the stone bench in which they are sitting is one of the few left in the village. He complains that this and many other traditional elements are missing, but I still see here the charm of small communities that, despite what he says, know how to respect their idiosyncrasies, as the chimneys of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still retain their solemnity.
We invited the Tasquinha do Cachucho where neighbors still gather to enjoy a snack "flesh on flesh" and good wine, as they have done ever since....
04/27/2016
The director of the municipal library, Francisco Lopes, my mentor in Abrantes, takes us to his village. Pego extends, as few other towns, in the vicinity by Abrantes. We walk around and I draw him while he is explaining to my wife that the stone bench in which they are sitting is one of the few left in the village. He complains that this and many other traditional elements are missing, but I still see here the charm of small communities that, despite what he says, know how to respect their idiosyncrasies, as the chimneys of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still retain their solemnity.
We invited the Tasquinha do Cachucho where neighbors still gather to enjoy a snack "flesh on flesh" and good wine, as they have done ever since....
