Pseudo Travel Journal Greece: Entry 6

click image to enlarge

I'm still taking my imaginary journey to Greece via an on-line travel class/lecture. This sketch is the famous Oracle at Delphi a fascinating and very ancient place. A sacred place that actually pre-dates the Greeks and goes further back into dim and lost ages of the human race when an Earth Mother Goddess was worshiped. That also happens to be a subject I am reading a lot about right now so this visit was particularly meaningful. Working quickly in fountain pen and watercolors. 

click image to enlarge

This is a fascinating island that is layered in civilizations, Greek, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, incredible rich architecture. 

click image to enlarge

Something else I really love, Byzantine churches!  I have quite a few odd and obscure subjects that I love. 

Pseudo Travel Journal Greece: Entry 5

click image to enlarge

The bookbinding class derailed my pseudo-travel journal a little but now I'm back on track.  

click image to enlarge

I'm finding this far more enjoyable than taking notes!!! I dug out my Daniel Smith Duo Chrome Desert Bronze watercolor for the patina on the bronze Age armor.  You can't see the paint's luminescence or color shift in the photo but every time I tilt my sketchbook I'm delighted! 

Pseudo Travel Journal Greece: Entry 4

click image to enlarge

 A bit of a longer post today trying to catch up on the past few days work.  The architecture is so challenging for me. I've been using pencil guidelines but I think I'm going to abandon that and go straight to pen. Partly in the interest of time, which I don't seem to have a lot of right now, as I am involved in a few projects, and partly because I'd like to train my eye and hand to really draw what I see. Find the lines, angles and symmetry in a natural way so that the sketch has a reasonable sense of accuracy.

click image to enlarge

 Finding a lot of beautiful and interesting spots in the video class that catch my interest and imagination. I loved the light and long shadows of the columns in this scene.

click image to enlarge

 The Temple of the Winds was fascinating, a true marvel of ingenuity form the ancient world. I believe that the ancients had quite a bit of advanced knowledge and understanding, more than we seem to want to give them credit for, It is not just the modern scientific era that has technology!

click image to enlarge

I've been particularly on the look out during the class for temples to Goddesses. The one above is to Themis the Goddess of Justice.

click image to enlarge

This is a lovely temple out in the country to the Goddess Artemis.

click image to enlarge

Here is the actual crack in the earth in a cleft of a hillside that leads to the underworld. It is the place the ancient Greeks believed Hades emerged from to snatch Persephone away, leaving her mother Demeter, Goddess of Grain grieving and angry, thus withdrawing her sustaining power from the earth and causing crops to die off and winter to come. I had no idea that there was an actual place you could go and see!  Every September initiation rituals were performed that brought people into the cult of Demeter, and what ever they saw and heard has been kept secret for all time. It was however, a life changing experience according to the records we have, with the basic theme being that Demeter would give her initiates the power to have life even after physical death. 

Pseudo Travel Journal: Greece Entry 3

click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

Having a wonderful time learning about Greek theater. Continuing on in fountain pen and light washes of gouache. 

Pseudo Travel Journal: Greece Entry 2

click image to enlarge

I continue to watch and sketch my way through a virtual tour of Greece and Turkey. It's funny that I seem to have the same problem in a virtual reality as I do in real life. I want to sketch everything, and get into a panic trying to decide what to sketch first. 

click image to enlarge

Architecture is such a challenge for me (but something I want to tackle through this experience) that I  sometimes feel the need to sketch nature with her beautiful organic shapes. 

click image to enlarge

But then I'm back to the challenge of all those angles, columns, and geometric shapes. 

A (Psudeo) Travel Journal in May

click image to enlarge

I've not done much traveling in my life. When I was a kid I always thought I would love to travel. I had then, and still have now, an urge to travel to far away exotic places. This coincides with my long held fascination with ancient history and archaeology. 

While my few travel experiences were generally good, (Florida, New Orleans, Belgium, Hawaii), I find travel stressful. I don't like surprises, but I  love a well planned itinerary.  I'm not one to simply wander about.  None of that really matters though, since circumstances in my life, that realistically are not going to change, will prevent me from doing much traveling anyway. 

In Julia Cameron's book Vein of Gold she encourages you to make a list of occupations you would like to have and things you would like to do but probably will never be able to. Then she challenges you to find way to incorporate some small part of that into your life.

click image to enlarge

This is me doing some of that.  I really admire people's travel journals. And I really admire people who travel a lot, with ease.  Instead of never having a travel journal from an exotic place I decided to do something about that in a small, fun way.  This has become my project for May.  I actually started a few days ago, overlapping with IFJM so that I wouldn't break my creative stride and lose momentum. 

I purchased a video course called Great Tours: Greece and Turkey, from Athens to Istanbul. This would be something you'd watch beforehand if you were planning to travel to those places, or if you're an arm chair traveler, like me!

I watch, pause the video, sketch, and continue watching, Sometimes I watch and pick out places I'd like to sketch, jot down where they are in the video, then re-wind and sketch after watching the whole segment.

click image to enlarge

It's not like being there, but it is its own unique experience nonetheless.