Here are some more vignette sketches from our last day in Bantayan Island. We decided to go to Paradise beach again…and this time on a relatively quiet day, early enough to nab a good shady spot. My daughter is reading ‘On Beauty’ by Zadie Smith…and the cacti around us (which have all all lost their thorns) were covered with carved-in graffiti!
Wed-3-Jan-2024
Having enjoyed doing faster vignette sketches the day before, I continued this on the day our daughters went scuba diving. While they were doing that we went to get a coffee…at a tea shop (top sketch). The second sketch was done while we waited at #DiveXtension. Afterwards we had lunch at Tristans’s Pizza Hauz (yes, pizza yet again – we failed to find anything else with veggie options), on the coast not far from the port.
Tue-2-Jan-2024
Here are some more sketches of another popular beach on Bantayan Island. The beach is a bit more remote than others, but despite that it was quite busy, because we visited on New Year’s Day. I decided to sketch the day in little faster vignettes instead of doing a larger painting. The first (top left) shows the edge of the sunshade we fashioned out of one of our hammocks, desperate for a bit of shade. Further down the beach there were lots of people partying around some fishing boats … behind which you can see a free standing sun-shade/canopy which someone had more sensibly brought along.
Mon-1-Jan-2024
This sketch was done when we went for a walk down the beach on New Year’s Eve. After walking for quite a while (and not reaching the fishing boats I had hoped to sketch), we stopped at a random spot and I drew this. I tried using my lovely new #RosemanyAndCo dagger brush to paint the overhanging palm tree.
Sun-31-Dec-2023
This sketch was done while we had lunch on Kota beach. It was so blisteringly hot that sitting out on the sand (there was very little shade on the part of the beach that is public) was not an option, so we had lunch at the “The Hungry Beach Co.”. This little restaurant had some veggie options, so that suited us fine….it was still Christmas!
Sat-30-Dec-2023
We spent most of our Bantayan Island holiday visiting different beaches. This beach is another popular one, but as I and my daughters are lazy to get up in the morning, we arrived late…during the hottest part of the day. Boy was it hot. After lunch (I did another sketch before this one but it’s not finished yet) we had to go back to the port to collect one of our bags that was not loaded on our way to Cebu…thanks Cebu Pacific! Then we came back to Kota beach and found a shady spot in front of a resort to chill out, where I sketched this.
Sat-30-Dec-2023
On our first full day in Bantayan we walked a few hundred yards up the beach to the Baigad lagoon, which is a popular attraction. We weren’t particularly impressed …it’s a bit crowded and people were playing intrusive music – certainly the photos on-line make it look much more picturesque. Although there was a bar with food, we found better veggie choices at a tiny little beachside cafe nearer our AirBnb. Anyway, we did find somewhere to sit in the shade, so I managed this sketch.
Fri-29-Dec-2023