12. Nafplio Window

The first portion of my May Greece vacation was spent in Nafplio, a small town on the Peloponnese Peninsula. Nafplio is on the coast and exceedingly charming with beautiful bouganvillia vines growing across the alleys and houses tucked into the hillside. After many hours of travel from Chicago to Madrid, Madrid to Athens, Athens bus to the KTEL bus terminal, and KTEL bus from Athens to Nafplio, we were delighted to find that this view awaited us in the hotel room we eventually found. We were able to see all the way down to the water. It was a lovely place to spend several days and an image which was enjoyable to revisit and paint.

11. Oia

Having spent a couple weeks in late May travelling in Greece, I have decided to revisit, in paint, a couple of the many (over 500) photographic images from the trip. This is one of those images, the sunset at Oia. Oia is said to have best sunsets on San Torini. So, we spent one evening at a cafe watching the sun set and caught this image of a windmill, typical Grecian white stucco hillside buildings, and the water beyond. The photo had a slight blurriness that gave the image a kind of ethereal quality. I think that quality was a bit lost in the crispness of the pencil lines. If I were to revisit this painting, I would paint without an initial pencil sketch.