Sketching by the Pool

While on a lovely holiday on Crete a lot of ancient sights and exhibitions triggered my brains, so even when relaxing at the pool of Hotel Malia Mare pencils and watercolours were at work, designing and digesting what I had seen.

At first the refreshing water brought me back to one of the last exercises with my students: painting a monochromous underwater matte-painting.  Water surface IS NOT easier to do in watercolours.

Next up: The ancient minoan dare of leaping across bulls. Looks so easy on the murals, but I doubted very much any powerful beast would take something like this quietly, even though the sport seems a lot fairer than fighting a torrero.

But what about those Minoan Palaces? Evans did a nice job offering his interpretation, so why not interprete further and further? Amphoras / vessels in the right corner as seen in the exhibitions in the Museum in Heraklion. 

But then again, sometimes pen and brain wander of to entirely unrelated places and come up with some very furry stuff: