Ink Sketch my view of Sitia Crete, from the Ferry

Here’s a recap of the sketches I did while exploring and leaving Crete. All sketched in my new Stillman & Birn Alpha Series 14cm x 9cm sketchbook, which is even smaller than my favoured A6 landscape sketchbook.

I did some additional people sketches during this duration, but I’ve included them in my Sketching People posts as part of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour, and have added links to those posts below.

Sketches of Heraklion Town

I didn’t sketch much in Heraklion, just the square near where we were staying that I did on our first morning, and all the rest of my sketches of this town on Crete were done at the ferry terminal while we were waiting of the ferry to Karpathos.

Although we were in Heraklion for a few days, we really wanted to explore more of the island. So we used the public bus service that runs regularly out of the east and west of the city. On our first full day we went to Malia Beach, and on our second full day we went to Reth

Urban Sketch of Malia Beach

I did quite a few people sketches on Malia Beach, but only got around to one beach landscape sketch — I was too busy splashing around in the sea to do more sketching! A bit of a simplistic sketch, but the approach I was staking for this holiday was to capture moments so that I had a memory to look back on. That was far more important than sketching a perfect sketch.

Sketches of Rethymno

It took longer than I imagined to reach Rethymno from Heraklion, and it was a bit of a boring ride for a lot of the journey, with no scenic views of the coast. It was also a really hot day, so we didn’t much feel like wandering around the Old Town for long when we got there. But we explored a little, and then had some lunch, before heading to the bus station to wait for the bus back to Heraklion. I saw this church from the bus station cafe, and had enough time to sketch it in ink, and I took a reference photo so that I could paint my sketch when I got back to our apartment.

I’d done some bougainvillea painting practice before I came away, so decided to put that to good use. I took quite a few photos of the Old Town, and loved the vivid pink bougainvillea next to this restaurant, so when I got back to the apartment I sketched this from the photo.

Urban Sketch of Heraklion Ferry Port

I sketched some people while we were waiting at the Heraklion Ferry Port, and in one of them the background was the side of a ferry that was in port – unfortunately it wasn’t ours, which was delayed by six hours.

Here’s some more of my Crete people sketches.

Urban Sketch aboard the Blue Star Ferry

It’s great to get back to slow traveling. We could have hopped on a quick flight from Crete to Karpathos, but instead we took this slow route. With the ferry journey taking around seven hours, I figured I’d get a lot of sketching done, but it was just so nice to sit and watch the waves and landscape, that it took me a while to get around to painting part of the ferry that was obscuring my view.

Urban Sketch of our First Port of Call – Sitia

We’d been traveling for what seemed like hours, and we were sitting on one side of the ferry which was looking out to sea. When we docked at the next port, I couldn’t figure out what island we were on, I was really confused, it should have been a little island, but it looked really big. Then I realised that we had merely followed the Crete coastline and had just reached the far eastern end of Crete at the small town of Sitia. The Ferry docked here for a while, so I grabbed my sketchbook and pen to capture this monochromatic street scene.

Sketch of our Second Port of Call – Kasos

The great thing about traveling on big ferries like The Blue Star Chios, is that there’s always a lot to load and unload, not just passengers and vehicles, but also product deliveries. So the stops in port usually take a while to choreograph the ins and outs.

Kasos Bay was obviously a lot bigger that the scene I sketched, but working in a small A6 sketchbook means that you have to really focus in on a small part of a scene to sketch, because the page is way too small to capture all that you see. So the size of this sketchbook has been really helpful to help with editing a view, so that I can focus in on what’s interesting to me. It also has to be not too difficult!

Next Stop – Karpathos