Morocco Sketches

I was drawn to the amazing entryways in the Marrakech medina. Almost every door has its own personality, despite having modest looks. The idea is that of privacy. The doors to private homes and riads often have this impenetrable feel to them, but once inside, the lush courtyard is revealed.
The entryways are often adorned with intricate woodwork, geometric tilework, and wrought ironwork.

I used ultramarine ink from Winsor & Newton in an inkwash to sketch this entrance.

Commuters in the Marrakech medina. Bikes and mopeds are a necessity in the Medina area, because they can easily navigate through the dense traffic and narrow streets. Micron pens and Copic sketch markers.

Black-winged Stilts from the Oued Igrounzer near Diabat, Morocco. This river winds through southwestern Morocco, often creating great habitat for birds. But the estuary where the river meets the Atlantic is particularly rich with waterbirds. Micron liner pens and Copic sketch markers.

I was obsessed with the Bab Agnaou Gate in Marrakech long before I finally saw it in person last year. This intricate gate, built in the twelfth century, is one of nineteen historic gates and is inlaid with floral decorations.This gate served as the main entrance to the royal Kasbah, which in the twelfth century was the fortified part of Marrakech.

The gate is built with a gray-blue sandstone, which makes it contrast vividly with the reddish walls of the Medina.

In the late evening, the sun hits the gate directly, and vivid oranges and slate blues. I sketched the gate from my photo using sepia ink and copic markers.

A Guerrab water seller in Marrakech wears traditional berber dress for this profession. Sketched with copic markers.

The Marrakech skyline has this frantic, disorganized look about it, and united only by drab, sandy colors and thousands of satellite dishes. But I spent a lot of time up here while in Marrakech, and found that it made a wonderful place for birdwatching and observing life in this city. In the late evenings, the sky was filled with swifts and martins, and beyond them, high up in the sky, migrating hawks and cranes. Although from my vantage point, I could never see down below in the streets, I would catch people as they took a break on their rooftop, to change laundry or to grab a smoke. Sketched with copic markers and a sepia liner pen from Micron.

The El Badi Palace was under construction when I visited. All the construction equipment made me want to imagine it in a different age. In this sketch, I imagined the Palace in the seventeenth century, when it fell into disrepair and its main courtyard and pools were likely overgrown. Would have been an amazing stopover for shorebirds.

Map of Morocco. I used copic sketch pens for this Morocco map.

Truck owners in Morocco pride themselves in the distinctive details of their truck. This one in Marrakech had custom decals and hand-painted elements throught.

Morocco is famous for its big, overpacked overland trucks, but I was partial to this pint-sized Suzuki I found in Marrakech. Ornate wood, canvas and painted metal adorned the cargo back.

The Renault 4 is everpresent in Morocco, and I was surprised by how many were in such good shape with their original stone paint jobs. This Renault is almost non-

existent in the states, but it is one of the sharpest car models in the world.

I couldn't figure out the purpose of this giant hand-push cart, seen outside the gates of the Marrakech medina. It was overloaded with used office furniture, and it reminded me of how transportation might look in a dystopian future.

Some pages from my Marrakech Moleskine journal. I use my Moleskine as a trip planner, a self-made guidebook, and a sketchbook. This journal I sketched in nut brown and orange winsor-newton inks. Since there is no inexpensive guidebook to the birds of North Africa or Morocco, I used my moleskine journal to create my own. The process of sketching bird species from photos is very useful because it makes the process of learning their names much easier. In fact, the birds of Morocco tend to come in bland desert colors - many creams, tans and browns. Having just two inks to draw them in helped me distinguish them better.