Artist's Impression - Smantha Zaza

KATHMANDU

“It was my second visit to Kathmandu, where I was spending another happy summer as a volunteer art teacher at a children’s school in Boudha area,” recalls Callifornia-born sketch artist Samantha Zaza. “One idle morning.  I sat on a rooftop terrace with a pot of tea to draw this scene of the neighborhood, which stretches away from the great Boudhanath stupa. The air was heavy with incense and the scent ofrain, and prayer flags fluttered in the breeze, snapping at sudden gusts. I studied the crooked little street that I walked down every day to get to school – a path that had changed my life in so many ways. But even as I drew, I knew that this illustration would never convey the feelings that I’d developed for this place and for the Nepal children whom I’d come to love. Still, I spend nearly an hour penning in the lines and the distant black mountains, and then I used my leftover tea as water for my gouache.

Currently living in Istanbul. Samantha Zaza will see her sketches of that city published in The art of urban Sketching. Due out in February 2012.