sketching in Romainmotier.

so it sounds a little sketchy, but i found some swiss sketchers on the internet and met up with them last weekend. i saw that they were heading to a town very close to lausanne to participate in the 31st worldwide sketchcrawl found through the urban sketchers website.

i hopped a local train from lausanne station and within 30 minutes was in the middle of farm fields and tiny towns. luckily nora came along for a few hours so i wasn't completely on my own. we walked 2km or so to the town of Romainmotier. a very tiny old town with a very beautiful abbey church. the main church that exists today was built in the 10th &11th centuries, and this nice plan diagram found here shows how the church developed from much earlier.

the church also had a traditional cloister which was removed during a period of religious reform. remnants of the old cloister still linger on the exterior walls and stones were laid to represent the original plan.

one of the most beautiful aspects of this church is the sandstone on the exterior- the color and aging of the stone is amazing. also, of course i love the way that there's still a taste of what used to be- ribs still sprouting from the exterior facade gives an idea of what used to be.

it was nice to escape into the countryside and listen to the music of cowbells for a few hours. it was also great to meet some lovely swiss sketchers who turned out to be just the kind of people i'd imagined.

Update: the sketchcrawl results from our group can be seen here!