Pamukkale & Perge: Stray Dogs and Ancient Cities

Whilst I was in Türkiye, we took a weekend trip to the small farming town of Pamukkale...

On the hillside above the town, there is the ancient city of Heirapolis, as well as some stunning thermal pools...

It was an extremely sunny day, which create dramatic shadows across the ruins - which was the perfect opportunity for me to focus on improving the light and shading in my sketches.

I spent a lot of time on this watercolour depicting the ruins in the ancient city, but I really wanted to capture the vivid colour and depth of the landscape to justice to the impressive location and give it an appropriate aesthetic of historical drama.

There is an incredible ampitheatre in the ancient city which you can visit - this sketch took me a long time to finish (I did most of it during the night when I couldn't sleep), because of the complexity in the stonework. But I wanted to produce a really detailed sketch that conveye the impressive architecture, also paying more attention to the light and shadow to give the drawing greater depth.

Pamukkale is a very popular tourist spot, the ancient city and travertines were heaving with coach-loads of tourists.

The other attractions are paragliding and hot air balloons, which I got to see when I got up very early on Sunday morning to go for a run.

I'm a bit more nervous of the stray dogs, especially after being chased by a pack of them whilst out running... But I did make friends with some very sweet dogs wandering around Develi (the next village from Pamukkale), who I suspect were free-roaming pets because one of them had a collar on...

We made a brief stop in the city of Develi, where we changed from a mini-bus to a coach on the way back to Antalya...

We also visited the ancient city of Perge, which is close to Antalya....

I made friends with a family of stray dogs outside the gift shop...

The puppies were especially adorable and I really wanted to take one home with me for my Dad to keep.