Lockdown Sketches – Week Four

The subject for day 22 of Corona daily lockdown drawings, is a beautiful and tenacious wild flower, or is it a pretty weed maybe? I picked a tiny piece of this plant years ago whilst on a walk and planted it in an old feta tin on the kerb outside our house. Those tins have long since died but the plant lives on, having spread through the fence into Eleni’s garden next door. Every spring it pushes its way through the bushy weeds which, this year, escaped being chopped back by the demos strimmer-man. For some reason they just didn’t come down our street. I love the delicate pale purple flowers and the bright green creeping tendrils.

Day 23 is a drawing of our office window drawn on a particularly sunny day. I’m liking how this paint colour has gently faded in the sun – it must be a few years since we re-painted the shutters. This side of the house takes less of a beating from the winter rains than the other side, so this window is in much better condition than the other one which faces the hills of Chrysokellaria.

Day 24 is a quick sketch of the corner of our living room. I was feeling a bit impatient and unsettled today so rushed right in with this sketch. Normally, it’s advisable to draw ‘the things which are in the front’ first in a drawing – for obvious reasons. In my haste, I started the drawing with the big canvas of the fishing boat and later realised the lamp shade was actually in front of it! An emergency repair job with one of those little correction strip mouses plus a coat of white gesso worked surprisingly well. This drawing has angles and size relationships all over the place due to my rushed state but I think it has a certain charm nontheless…

Day 25 is a sketch of the road I walk down every day to get to my new studio, although I’m not doing that much at the moment. The studio has been closed since mid March. I do sometimes still work in there, with the door firmly locked behind me… it’s nice to get out of the house and ‘go to work’. The pink building with tall green doors across the main road is ‘the old carpenter’s shop’. I had my eye on this huge, empty shop for ages – it has so much potential but needs so much work doing to make it usable. It doesn’t have a loo or water and seems to need a new floor, new doors and re-plastering – and that’s just what I can tell from peering through the windows! Apparently it was one of the first kafeneon in Harakopio and used to be really buzzing. Hopefully someone will see the potential and do something with it soon…

Day 26 is a view down our street which takes in four of our neighbours houses. Only two are occupied year-round – the others are owned by people who live in Athens and normally come down only in the summer or on holiday weekends. Who knows when the Athenians will be allowed to visit their village houses again… I painted the white flowers on the road outside our house with asvesti, just before Easter this year. This drawing was done on an extremely quiet Good Friday.

Day 27: I’d been wanting to do a sketch of this little house for some time and finally got around to doing it on Easter Saturday. The combination of the lovely green shutters and the spring greenery growing where the roof once was, is just charming. For years there were two big bins parked right in front of the shutters but they seem to have been moved to outside the graveyard. I love that the yellow house adjoining the ruin is in such pristine condition by comparison.

Day 28: An Easter Sunday sketch of a street in Harakopio. Apart from some rather nice Greek music from our immediate neighbours and the odd bbq, it was an extremely quiet Easter Sunday this year. Normally we would go out for lunch as we tend to have visitors over Easter. I love going to the Panigiri in Vasilitsi on Easter Sunday afternoon to get a bit of dancing in… but not this year. Our dance classes in Koroni stopped way back in March so there will be no performances at all this summer. Hopefully we will be able to start again in October…