Cretan Landscape Studies

These are sketches for a work in progress, a children's book on the legend of the Minotaur.  I have spent some time studying Greek illustration and painting on amphora in preparation for this project, and these landscape studies are an attempt to develop an aesthetic that evokes classical Greece while incorporating perspective, greater detail, and a more expansive scope than anything Greeks painted. Each of these sketches depict Crete, where my story begins.

The Idean Cave, Psiloritis Mountain

 The Idean Cave is where Rhea hid Zeus to protect him from Cronos. I chose to draw the entrance to this cave because it seemed challenging. Mediterranean mountains are characteristically craggy and the question of how to render them in illustration seemed like an interesting one to solve.

A craggy landscape daring any illustrator to draw it.

Psychro Cave, Lasithi

Psychro Cave is where Zeus was born. It is a remarkable and sacred cave, with towering stalagmites and a sacred alter in its lower chambers. These alters were used to sacrifice bulls and other animals to Zeus. I thought this was a challenge as well, considering the complicated forms that stalagmites take in the cave.

Psychro Cave, full of stalagmites and cool lighting

Ocean off the southern coast, Psiloritis Mountain in the background

I imagine Talon, the bronze giant who protected the shores of Crete, walking along landscapes like this one. I have been interested in drawing water in an ancient Greek style. This was particularly challenging because the Greeks never draw water the way we draw it, but I think I cracked it with this.

Highlighted here are Greek depictions of water.

The Eleusinian amphora above has a few representations of water in it. I was drawn to the guilloché, the intertwined rope-like waves that form a border. This is a common design in architecture, but at first it doesn't seem really usable as water. The Greeks used the guilloché to depict the barrier between air and water, but the question is, how to use this in perspective drawing? My thought was to stack guilloché and draw them as water waves, with peaks and crests.