On the first full day we were at Paralio Astros we went down to the sandy beach in late afternoon and almost immediately spotted a large marbled rock sitting in the surf and decided to work at extending the patterns into the sand. We gathered cream and white stones and Ian acted as photographer while I placed them. As the rock was continually asked by the waves, nothing stayed put for very long but it was interesting to see the patterns change and then work with them. 
We watched all the stones we'd placed gradually being removed untile there were none left. Whilst doing so, I saw something move in the gravel, a few tentacle-like objects waving around and a starfish gradually push itself out from underneath the stones it was buried under.
We decided this would be the subject of our next art work on the other 'Town Beach' and a few days later we spent a happy time collecting suitable coloured stones walking along the tideline ( there'd been a storm the day before and the patterns of weed deposited were wonderful). After a fishy lunch at one of the very Greek fish tavernas , sorting the stones while we waited, we went back down to the beach and laid out our creature. The photo on the website is of it dry - we also wet it , first of all with a water filled paintbrush so only the starfish was wetted but unfortunately it dried too quickly. More drastic measures of pouring water on it did give wonderful colours (see below) but also wet the background so not quite so satisfactory
We collected far more stones for our palette than we used, most of which were the colours of the local limestone rocks and soils.
The photographer in action !The next day when we came back there was more gravel deposited and our starfish was gone. I hope others saw it before it was covered over.
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