Urban Sketch of Faces on the Rhodes to Athens Ferry

Day One Hundred and Sixty-Eight of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 168 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour, with a collection of people sketches during our overnight ferry trip from Rhodes to Piraeus in Athens.

Urban Sketching People During Our Ferry Ride

With ??? hours to kill during this overnight ferry ride there was no excuse not to get a little bit of sketching in. MOH was happy to hunker down in the bottom bunk and listen to an audio book, so I escaped he cabin to mooch around the ferry looking for people to sketch.

Urban Sketching at Night

I sat in the cafe/bar area to sketch people sitting at some of the other tables. I can’t remember the last time I was on an overnight ferry, and it looked as boring and uncomfortable as I remembered. I’m so glad I have sketching to entertain my hands and brain.

I started off by sketching two guys talking to each other, and then added other people from other tables, to the sketch to create a confusing montage of faces. I’ve done a few of these composite sketches during this trip, and it’s fast becoming my favourite way to sketch groups of people.

My final sketch before I retired for the night was a couple dressed in red having a midnight feast of junk food. Tomato and Oregano is a classic Greek combination, so I added their crisps into the scene.

Urban Sketching in the Morning

I felt a bit creepy studying sleeping people asleep, but the scene was just too enticing not to try and capture. Luckily we’d rented a cabin for the journey, but a lot of people were trying to get comfortable on chairs, couches, or the floor. It looked like the morning after an intoxicating frat house party. Lots of inert bodies in foreshortened positions, a sketching opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

I used a limited colour palette of blues and greens and neutral colours with a few spots of Quin Rose as an accent colour. I felt the most invasive when sketching this couple on their blow up bed, but it was such an iconic memory of traveling on this overnight ferry I’m glad I sketched this selection of sleeping bodies. At least it was good motivation to sketch quickly – so that I could move along before being discovered!

The night journey was as bad as I expected. It was a full moon, so it was great to go out on deck and be in the middle of the ocean in the dark, with the moon. I expected to see more stars, but I think the full moon must have drowned them out.

We pulled into a couple of different islands along the way. The first was Kos, where the captain didn’t make the docking because of the huge waves, and had to do a big circle to make another approach.

The second stop was at a smaller island that we hadn’t been before, and it was due to dock around midnight so I thought I’d get a chance to see it from the deck, but we were running about 90 minutes behind schedule, and I headed to bed instead. Booking cabins was definitely the best decision we made.