Two Water Cities, China and Italy

In Aug 2006, I took a one-day trip to Zhou Zhuang from Shanghai where I was on an official trip. Zhou Zhuang is the Venice of China, one of the ancient water cities in Jiangsu Province. I sat on one of the many steps and sketched for about 20 minutes under the hot sun. The second drawing was done in Jun 2001 while I was crossing one of the many canals in Venice with my friends. It got to be real quick and it was done like in 5 minutes on a crowded narrow bridge. It was amazing how much a few rapid lines can depict a city and how different are these two sketches after a good interval of 5 years. In my view, the ‘differentiation factors’ are the locations, moods, type of drawing instruments, time durations and company! What do you think?