Stop-over sketches

 Rustem Pasha Mosque, A5 sketchbook © Sue Pownall

My flight home from Italy was first back to Barcelona then via Istanbul. As I had a 10 hour stop-over in Istanbul, I met up with one of my favourite arty people Samantha. She blogs at Harika and is an urbansketcher. Also, with us was Pedro, an illustrator from Portugal (I forgot to get his site address). We spent most of the time in the Taksim area of Istanbul, in a café drinking Turkish tea, chatting, and of course sketching. My drawing is a composite as people came and went.

Firuzağa Çay Bahçesi A5 sketchbook © Sue Pownall

This is what our table looked like minus a few tea glasses.

Firuzağa Çay Bahçesi © Sue Pownall

When we finally left the café, we walked through the narrow streets of Taksim and down to the river to have fresh fish for lunch. We crossed the river into the Fatih district and after lunch wandered around for something else to draw. I had only my little point-and-shoot Olympus with me, which needs throwing away!!! However, I did get one good shot (below).

© Sue Pownall

We chose to draw at the Rustem Pasha Mosque and tiredness made me shy away from tackling anything to detailled or difficult, so I drew two colourful tourists having a rest before visiting the mosque. (top)

It's summertime

and this nomad is wandering.

The map shows my key stops, although the majority of the summer will be spent in Barcelona.

I'm off tomorrow morning!

I'm not sure how much time or opportunity I will get to post whilst I am away, but please pop by in case I do. (Saturday is WorldWide SketchCrawl #36, so I will definitely be sketching)

Also, I'm not sure if I'll be able to  visit your blogs, so I apologise if I miss anything.

I'm back in Muscat 23rd August.

Have a good summer everyone.