For the fibers class, our next assignment was to choose a single place in our area and spend at least 45 minutes observing it (using photographs, sketches, and so on). I spent the afternoon photographing and sketching the little square behind the magnificent Church of Our Lady before Tyn.
Judging by the street sign, the square might be called Týnská Ulička; I'm not sure. Perhaps that's just a street name. Týnská is one of the streets that leads into it.
The fact that this square is where the crepe stand sets up every day had absolutely nothing to do with my decision.
Well, it wasn't the only reason, anyway.
After lunch (a ham-and-cheese crepe, since they were so conveniently nearby), I took a few dozen photographs of the square.
This is one of the things I love about Prague. It's easy to find gorgeous, elaborate buildings wedged into tiny little squares and back alleys, where you can barely even get across the street to look at them. I don't know if the city has grown up around buildings like this, or if there's just such an abundance of decoration in the city that they don't have to constrain it to the highly visible areas. Either way, I love being able to walk down the narrow streets and see lovely architecture like this stretching up four times as high as the street is wide.
Judging by the street sign, the square might be called Týnská Ulička; I'm not sure. Perhaps that's just a street name. Týnská is one of the streets that leads into it.
The fact that this square is where the crepe stand sets up every day had absolutely nothing to do with my decision.
After lunch (a ham-and-cheese crepe, since they were so conveniently nearby), I took a few dozen photographs of the square.
This is one of the things I love about Prague. It's easy to find gorgeous, elaborate buildings wedged into tiny little squares and back alleys, where you can barely even get across the street to look at them. I don't know if the city has grown up around buildings like this, or if there's just such an abundance of decoration in the city that they don't have to constrain it to the highly visible areas. Either way, I love being able to walk down the narrow streets and see lovely architecture like this stretching up four times as high as the street is wide.
It was hard to get even a single building into a photograph, though, so I eventually turned to sketching in an attempt to get a feel for the entire square. I still had most of my 45 minutes left, so I found a good vantage point - up on one of the ledges between the buttresses of the church - and took my time. People stopped occasionally to watch me. One even asked to take a picture of the half-finished sketch.
A little while later, I finished the sketch, checked my watch, and found that I had been drawing nonstop for three hours. Part of that was under an umbrella, because I wasn't going to stop for a silly thing like rain. I'd been back and forth across the square more times than I could count, trying to get a good view of every part of every building.
I'm fairly satisfied with the result.
Having become familiar with practically every meter of the square by then (there's no better way to observe something than to sketch it), I packed up my sketchbook and got another crepe for dessert. (They were nearby, after all.)
When I ordered the second crepe, in Czech again, the woman at the stand asked where I was from. She seemed surprised that I was from America, saying that my accent sounded Polish. I think that's a good sign.
On the way back, I stopped to watch the man blowing giant bubbles in the Old Town Square. I'd seen this type of performance once before - at night, in the square in front of the Museum, where the bubbles reflected the myriad lights of the city around them - but this time, it was light enough to get photographs.
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