Urban Sketch of a man under a yellow umbrella on Malia Beach

Day One Hundred and Fifty-Eight of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 158 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Sketching sunbathers on the beach in Malia during our second day on the Greek Island of Crete.

Sketching Sunbathers on Malia Beach

We were staying in Heraklion, and had two days to wait for the ferry to take us to Karpathos and we didn’t want to just hang around this port city in the heat, so we headed to Malia Beach for the day on the public bus.

Compilation Sketch

I started sketching a person with her arms across her face, and before I’d got any further than her arms and hair – she got up for a swim. I would usually abandon the page (and stick a blank piece of paper over the errant sketch and use the page at a later date), but instead I carried on sketching other sun worshippers. Even though it’s a bit loose, I really like how I managed to capture the foreshortened figure in the blue bikini.

This next lady was out for the count, and I used simple lines to capture her likeness, just incase she got up and moved away before I’d finished.

This next foreshortened sketch brings back a wonderful memory. She was a mother of at least three girls that were all quite high maintenance and you could see she just wanted to relax and sunbathe. One of the teen daughters asked when dinner was going to be (it was only about 2pm), and without getting up, the mum just turned her hand upside down – palm up, and lifted her shoulders slightly in the universal sign of “I don’t know” – and carried on sunbathing.

These yellow sun umbrellas were an iconic part of the area of beach we were sitting in. I experimented with just daubing a little bit of sky rather than extending across the entire page, in order to highlight this man and umbrella as the focal point. The use of the shadow cast on the back of the man is also another element that helps to draw the eye to the focal point area.

Urban Sketch of a Building and Malia Beach Scene

I did one urban sketch scene of the chapel on this little island just off the coast, and included the yellow umbrella that was obscuring my view.

I did a couple of portrait-oriented sketches. One of a man on the beach which managed to capture his confused expression. And I did the other sketch while we were waiting at the bus stop in the evening to get back to Heraklion.

Beaches are a great place to sketch, especially on hot days. If you’re lucky you can find people that don’t move very much. I’m glad I didn’t abandon my sketch page when I only had a small part of a sketch started, and just carried on to create that montage of sunbathers. I think it’s ok that the page is a little confusing and takes a little bit of studying to figure out which limbs belong to which person. This just gives the page an injection of interest, that a tidy and well-laid out sketch page doesn’t have.