Greece!

I went to Greece for an art workshop!!

That’s me sketching at the Temple of Aphaia on the island of Aigina. This was one of my favorite excursions.

A couple months ago, my figure sculpting teacher, Thanasi announced he'd be hosting a travel workshop through our school to create art in Greece. I immediately knew I wanted to find a way to make it happen.

Because of logistical complications when doing sculpture while traveling (getting things back home, for example), this workshop was going to be for plein air* watercolor. So even though the workshop was going to be for 2-dimensional art, something I have very little experience in, I figured it would still be an amazing learning experience and interesting trip overall. Creating art of any sort is worth it. :)

We've all been friends for a while now (me, Nick, and Thanasi), so that was the icing on the cake and the final push to commit to this trip.

It took some time and effort to save up the money, but before we knew it, the deposits were in, tickets were booked, and things were off and running! It was really happening! Nick and I planned to room together and we also added a couple of nights in Athens past the workshop to explore more.

On June 20th, we took off from DC, bound for Athens, by way of Montreal. A missed connection and a long story short, we had to reroute through Paris and it took us a full 24 hours of travel before we finally arrived at our hotel on the Greek island of Aegina.

The workshop group was about a dozen of us - a collection of students from Thanasi's figure drawing and figure sculpting classes. Everyone in the group was an interesting and awesome person. :) We did excursions to explore around the island, as well as a day trip to Athens to check out the Parthenon and the Acropolis Museum. It was surface-of-the-sun hot that day, but still loads of fun.

Our little group spent the days creating art, learning and exploring, getting a few demos an lessons, but also not being overbooked. We had plenty of time to relax and swim or just poke around town, which was glorious. A few times we’d do a group meal together, but I appreciated that we had a decent amount of freedom to do as we pleased.

I’ll never forget this beautiful, amazing trip - especially getting to make new friends and bond more with existing friends. Nick and I got to know Thanasi even better, as well as Claire, Barry, and Max. I came home with a few sketches and watercolors from some amazing places… but also so many great pictures, memories, and hilarious stories. Totally worth it. :)

*plein air is just a fancy French way of saying outside

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