I sat down in a ditch beside the road, and started to sketch a beautiful farm in my Moleskine notebook. An elderly man on a bike stopped behind me after a few minutes, and said: “So you decided to draw our ruin? You should see what it looked like before. The barns had roofs, the house had beautiful plaster, and the wall wasn’t damaged.”

Well, for the man, and for all of you: Just such buildings are the best for drawing. You can find a lot of interesting details, you can explore while you are drawing. You feel time passing when you see how nature is defeating man, step by step, disturbing artificial structures, and overgrowing walls and roofs. Finally, bricks and stones perfectly blend into lush vegetation. Sure, I like to draw well-maintained castles, churches, and small village chapels too, but when I see a house where the owners cannot take care for it, unlike them I am happy, and I take out my Moleskine.