What a Folly!

Glad to say that I have regained my equilibrium after getting  some medical good news so I was able to get some sketching in at the Rococo garden in Veitshöchheim. Check out this folly …… a grotto made out of rocks and shells.  This is my sketch …..! 

The octagonal pavilion was built around  1770 and has got two storeys, the lower is a stone grotto with built in niches where fantastic animal figures hide in the shadows;  dragons, eagles, rabbits and birds lurk awaiting to surprise visitors. 

The upper storey is fabulously decorated with striped columns, rams heads and a variety of decorative borders, amazingly created out of thousands if not millions of shells. Often affectionately called the Schneckenhaus, (the Snail house) this building is in a very quiet corner of the Rococo garden and the detail is eye boggling. Unfortunately, the front is almost always in the shade, making picking out the details tricky, maybe I might do a couple of sketches of details at some time in the future. 

And here is my set up ;), rather makeshift because there wasn’t a bench nearby so I grovelled on the edge of a walkway leading up to the grotto! The weather was lovely, the only problem was getting up at the end, ah yes …. ageing is not for the faint of heart, fortunately there was nobody there to see my attempts at getting back on my feet.