Croatia by Sail
Some places stay with you through a single colour, a shape or the quality of light. Sailing along the Dalmatian coast gave me all three: the deep blues of the Adriatic, pale stone villages, small islands appearing on the horizon and mornings that began somewhere different each day.
In summer 2020, I spent a week sailing through Dalmatia, passing the islands and waters around the Kornati National Park, and visiting places including Kaprije, Zlarin and Šibenik.
I went there to sail and to step away from everyday life. I returned with photographs, memories and details that began quietly finding their way into ideas for new illustrations and patterns.
Between the Islands and the Adriatic
Sailing creates a different relationship with a landscape. Instead of arriving somewhere and staying, the view is always changing — an island ahead, open water behind, a village appearing around the next headland.
Around the Dalmatian coast, small uninhabited islands sit beside inhabited ones, and the colours seem unusually clear: limestone, dry grasses, green pines and the intense blue of the sea.
The Kornati archipelago was particularly memorable. Its stripped-back landscape has a kind of quiet drama — rock, water and sky reduced almost to simple shapes.
Šibenik, Zlarin and Kaprije
The smaller villages offered another kind of inspiration. Their scale, stone buildings, shutters, narrow streets and relationship with the water felt very different from the open landscape seen from the boat.
Šibenik stayed with me particularly strongly. Its old town is layered with stone, steps, archways and architectural details that seem to reveal themselves gradually as you walk.
Places such as Zlarin and Kaprije had a quieter rhythm. Boats, small harbours and houses facing the sea created compositions almost without trying — the sort of details that make me stop, photograph something and return to it later when drawing.
The Details I Remember
Travel inspiration rarely comes from one grand view alone. More often, I remember fragments.
Dolphins appearing beside the boat. The changing colour of the water. Seafood eaten close to the harbour. Warm stone after a day in the sun. The silence of an early morning anchorage before other boats begin to move.
These small observations build a visual memory of a place. Sometimes they become part of a drawing directly; sometimes they return much later as a colour combination, a line, a pattern or simply an atmosphere.
From Travel to Illustration
I do not usually travel with the intention of designing a particular scarf. Inspiration happens less predictably than that.
What I collect instead are impressions: unusual colour relationships, plants, architectural forms, animals, weather and the feeling of a particular landscape. Later, some of those fragments begin to connect with other ideas on the drawing table.
Dalmatia gave me an extraordinary amount to remember. The old architecture of Šibenik, the small Croatian villages and the landscapes seen from the sea all became part of a visual archive that I carried home.
The scarves themselves also travelled with me. Against stone, sea and Mediterranean light, familiar illustrations seemed to take on another character — a reminder that a piece changes with the setting in which it is worn.
A Dalmatian Photo Story
The photographs remain a record of the journey: islands, sailing, encounters with wildlife and the small details that made the coast feel so distinctive.
Kaprije, Zlarin, Šibenik and the Adriatic — summer 2020.
What Travel Leaves Behind
Long after a journey ends, certain images remain surprisingly clear. For me, Dalmatia is still early sunlight across the water, stone against intense blue and the feeling of waking each morning somewhere new.
Those memories do not always become an illustration immediately. They stay somewhere in the background until another idea gives them a reason to return.
That is perhaps the most valuable part of travelling for me as an illustrator: not searching for inspiration, but allowing a place to become part of the visual world I draw from later.
Some journeys end at the harbour. Others continue quietly through the drawings that follow.
Each piece begins with a line.
I really love seeing crafts like this, this is very uncommon and I really love it. Charlotta Abraham Nagel