Lourdes

I was on Lourdes again yesterday. We are making a tour around France at this moment. We already did Normandy and will be heading north tomorrow. 

Lourdes is always impressive, to see all these ill and handicapped people get strength out of their faith. And all these young people pushing carts and helping any way they can. Touching. A quick sketch of the grotto of Bernadette with the sacred source.

Crash MH17

Driving home from work I heard the news from the plane MH17 Malaysian airlines which was shot down above the Ukraine. It started from Amsterdam and had a lot of Dutch on that plane.
Horrible images on the internet, had to rework them in this drawing.
I mean, I have been to the Ukraine a few times, know how the country looks like. I've flown over the area a few times to Asia, and we often travelled with the travel agency that had Dutch passengers in this plane. It suddenly comes near.

Chemicals

Another job at the chemical plant Chemelot. I passed this installation this morning, walking from a meeting to our site office. Just enough time for a quick one. Fountain pen ink washed out with water and adding a little colour.

Le Mans 1970

Wanted to draw something this evening. Anything.
I took a picture of a Le Mans 24 hour racing car from 1970 (a Porsche), and tried to draw speed.
I am not sure the drawing really conveys speed, I'll check in a few days.
I even wonder if the choice of watercolourpencil is the correct one.
Sometimes it takes a few days to see clearly if you achieved the goal you set for yourself.

Watercolour pencil

Bought myself a good set of watercolour pencils (Faber Castell). Started experimenting with them, based on a picture took a few weeks ago in the Paris Metro. Just an exercise.

Icarus

Busy with all kind of stuff, except Urban sketching or drawing.
I had planned to go out last weekend, but ended up writing the "the hunt for Carlos" comic.
And working on my new stained glass project: Icarus. Making these statues is great fun.

BlamBlamBlam

As you may recall I host the Comic department of a Facebook site called "sketching Workshop". It features a kind of drawing puzzle game called "the Sherlock game". 15 artists make a drawing on a chosen theme in their own style. Like a dangerous woman smoking a cigarette.
The visitors must guess the artists name.
Unfortunately I lack the time to participate, but it's a challenging game.

Anyway, the drawings this time were so good, that they came up with the idea to change it into a comic story.
A James Bond story!
I helped making some in between panels, and rewrote the story and all balloon conversations.

It will be issued somewhere next week, but in the meantime: here is the Teaser Alert.

The love letter

The love letter. A painting loosely based on a painting by Vermeer.
I posted an earlier version on this blog some time ago, here is the link:
http://www.renefijten.blogspot.nl/2014/02/stuck-at-vermeer.html
I received some good observations by Beth (from Montreal), which I followed to some extent.
I also posted the painting on another forum (sketching workshop), and even if I did not follow all suggestions, they all made sense somehow. I makes you think, and that's the only way to improve.

The major changes are:
- background: toning down the background and unifying the top with the bottom, getting rid of saturated  red.
- figure: the posture of the maid was unnatural, I made her smaller and repositioned the arm for a more natural look.
- I made the yellow skirt less exuberant and enlarged the letter (the subject of the painting....)
BTW: I observe that the blue lines in this picture come out more saturated than they do in reality, I'ts hard to make good pictures of the paintings I make.