TRAVEL WITH MY ART #8, SUCURAJ, ISLAND HVAR ( CROATIA)

Time for another edition of Travel with My Art.  The reason why I decided to start this feature on my blog was to give people an opportunity to travel with my art. Sure, we can travel digitally with photographs and videos, but there is something special about seeing a painting of a place and knowing that it was painted or illustrated. Every art medium brings something special to the game and gives us another opportunity to try to capture what we feel with our soul. As much as I appreciate, love and respect photography as an art form, I think that I will always be more a painter than a photographer. I shared a lot of my photograph (as well as those of my husband) on this blog, but I also share a lot of my art.  

I illustrated different places and locations in the past, but something about this pandemic and the inability (of most people) to travel made me realize that perhaps I should dig into it a bit more. So far, I have illustrated mostly places and locations that I have visited myself (Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina & Italy)  but once I illustrated a place I would love to visit in Siberia, Russia. I hope these location paintings & illustration will grow into a regular feature on my blog and show how we can indeed travel with art. There are many ways to travel (and I explored this theme a bit more in this post).  

This time I'm taking you to magical island Hvar again. I'm sharing an acrylic painting of Sucuraj (spelled Sućuraj in Croatian). I'm quite excited to share this painting with you. I still have to sign this canvas and apply the final varnish but it's finished as far as painting goes.  If you want to know more about this place, you're welcome to check out my old posts about it here, here and here. If anyone is interested in my outfit, I'm wearing a black vintage dress (borrowed from mother) and a pair of black heeled boots (from Peko like most of my boots). I have actually worn this dress  quite a few times since I borrowed it from my mother. It's such a statement dress, I love it. 

Sucuraj has a special place in my heart because it was typically our family route whenever we would come to Hvar- and that was pretty often. When I was a kid and before we started school, we spent so much time on island Hvar. Moreover, we would always come here for holidays and summer. I always loved Sucuraj and the way it seemed to always greet me as a kid.  One advice I can give to other artists is to paint what you love. There is something very inspiring about painting a place you care about deeply, even if it can be a bit unnerving. 

A few facts about Sucuraj: it can be describes both as a tiny town and a village, but I don't think it has an official status of a town. Sucuraj can also be describes quite accurately as a touristic settlement and a small port (with a a ferry that docks regularly). This part of the island doesn't have any towns, so Sucuraj is the official centre of the eastern part of Hvar island. It has more than 2700 hours of sunshine per year making it one of the sunniest towns!  It is actually very close to the mainland (5 km), so close that a ferry ride from Drvenik (the coastal port) typically takes less than half an hour. Sucuraj is tiny but charming. There are less than 400 inhabitants living in Sucuraj but this place has its own school, hospital and a tourist office.  You can expect to enjoy a fair number of sunny days  in Sucuraj that will in turn allow you to enjoy the wonderful views this place offers. I'm mentioning the views because the placement of this little port is fantastic, it has a view of both sides of the island. If you look at one side, you can see the Croatian coastline and on the other side you can see semisland Pelješac and island Korčula. This town is tiny so you can see all of it fairly quickly.  The view I choose for my illustration is that of semi-island Pelješac. Scroll down to see the photograph reference I used as well as a little collage I put together that will hopefully give you a feel of this lovely place. 

I remembered to take some photographs while I was painting because I know many find such 'work in progress' photographs fascinating. This painting was extremely time consuming. I was working on a high quality canvas and I had my colours figured out, so that made things a bit more easy but still the sea was not easy to paint. I worked on the sea in stages in what felt like forever. The entire painting took about 50 hours of intense labour to finish. The early stages were not that challenging. I didn't have issues sketching and applying the first layers of paint but trying to capture the sea and its movements- that was challenging. However, you know I'm always up for challenge. If we are not pushing ourselves as artists, we are not learning and getting better. 

MAKING OF SUCURAJ PAINTING- THE STAGES OF PAINTING SEA WATER ACCURATELY

I worked really hard on capturing the water but I also wanted to get a bit creative with it. Bellow you can see the basic process of laying down different foundation colours. Even after many layers  I kept adding fine details, staring at the photographs for hours and trying to capture little drops of water on stones. It was some hard work. 

 A PAINTING PARTY- THIS PAINTING AGAINST SOME OF MY OLDER ONES- I couldn't resist taking a photograph of this painting next to the last painting I did. Funny how they match together. Sure, they both depict island Hvar but not the same part of the island. Still, if you see closely, you'll see how the horizons match. The sea water illustrated is different because on the left one we have a sand beach and the the right we have rocks. Moreover, Zavala and Sucuraj are many kilometres apart (even if located on the same island). Nevertheless, it was fun to compare these two and place them against the two canvases I have on one of my walls. I did an art tour of my home in collaboration with Kezzie. Last summer, Kezzie hosted this cool bloggers art gallery at home link up, the idea being that bloggers share the art they have in their home ( such a cool idea). So, here is a new version of my home art gallery (well, at least of one wall). Maybe I'll show you all the art I own at the moment some other time.

Did you enjoy visiting Sucuraj with my art? What other places would you like to visit in this way? I left my email at the end of the post in case anyone has any inquiries about this canvas painting. That would be all, take care. 

 Thank you for reading and visiting!