Fiber tissue

I borrowed some tissue with fibers into it, and glued it into my A4 moleskine with acrylic binder.
Then added watercolour, which flowed with this nice result. The watercolour went its own way, it was hard to steer. But that was the fun part of it.

Liege: Impasse de la vignette

Gerard Michel's backyard, on the Impasse de la Vignette in Liège. I used a Namiki Falcon pen on this sketch, which I borrowed from Simonetta. The linework asked for a different type of painting.

Altea

A few more sketches from Spain. One from Altea, a little white village on top of a hill with view to the Mediterranean sea. E beautiful walk to the top.
And a sketch on one of the terraces of the senior English guy sitting next to us. I don't think he noticed us, he was rather focused on the big screen with English championship soccer and pints of beer. All terraces in Benidorm have huge screens showing either soccer or darts.

Feed Design Lab Symposium.

What I do for a living.
Together with the dutch organisation "feed design lab", Tebodin organizes a symposium on animal and livestock nutrition. It will focus on the use of new technology, improved logistics and sustainability.

They asked me to illustrate the invitation to the symposium, cartoonwise. Here it is.

Goslar, Germany

Yesterday I returned from a short business trip to Goslar, in the Harz, not far from Hannover.
On monday evening we had a cosy dinner with the client in an Italian restaurant. After the meal I made a short night walk through the beautiful town.
So yesterday late in the afternoon, the snow had gone but it was still freezing, I took the opportunity to make this quick sketch of the Kaiserpfalz, on location. The sketch is not very good, it was quite cold and a few flocks of snow made the paper too moist. But here it is anyway.

Liege city views

More views of Liège, the top one from the citadelle towards Ste. Croix. It rained a bit, drizzle, you can see it on the watercolour. But I liked the unexpected effect, I left it that way. The bottom one are the steps of Bueren. 300something steep steps. Enough to get exhausted when our are on the top.

Night sketching

 

Another of the Liège sketches. On friday night, after having enough of playing tablesoccer, Florian Afflerbach came up with the idea to draw cars. Even though it was midnight, 6 of us took our sketching gear and went out into the streets to find a car. We found this old Renault 4. The woman in the house next to this car came to the door and asked what we were doing, Lapin explained and in the end she offered tea and cookies. The guy in blue is Lapin (fitted out with headlights), on the right Florian.

Liège: old stuff

A few more drawings from the Liège series. The bottom one is a printing machine, standing in the local Academic Library, another place Gerard Michel managed to arrange for us to draw in.
The top drawing is the friday morning "Marché des puces", the flea market. It was really great: they had the really old and worn stuff lying around, not the tourist T-shirts and china produced bar signs that you can find see at more known markets in Paris or London. The vendor in the bus was very curious what I was doing there, but accepted it without further comment.

Bertie

After a lot of experimenting with textured backgrounds last few weeks, in order to loose the rigidity of reality, we were "allowed" to make more a realistic portrait today.
It was the first realistic portrait from a live model in about a year, and took some effort to get used to tonality and colours. Well, here it is. Acrylic on grey paper, 50x70cm.

Je suis Charlie

Furious and sad.

Sketches of spain

 

 

The advantage of Spain in the winter: you can sit on a terrace in the sun, in full view of the sea, without wearing sunglasses and coloured bermudas.

Both drawings were made on the same day, on two different terraces. Not chosen for the scene, but just because the coffee smelled so good. And on second thought, the view was great. 

What a way to spend a lazy afternoon.

Valencia

Last tuesday we (my wife Gertie, my brother&partner and my mother) made a trip to Valencia, to visit the architectural masterpiece by Santiago Calatrava. A stunning complex of buildings: mesmerizing and megalomaniac at the same time. Especially at night, see image below.
But the biggest surprise was in the center of town: just walking down a street I noticed two sketchers sitting on the curb. I talked to them, and asked if they knew about USK. And to my surprise the guy immediately recognized my name. It was Bruno (carnets de bru) and his wife Isabelle, from the south of France, visiting the Valencia sketchers. I have followed Bruno for years, but had no idea how he looked like. Imagine, we had exchanged some remarks just the week before! 
It's stunning how small the world can get.

The last sketch of 2014: Spain

We just returned from Spain, Benidorm. We didn't feel like spending the holidays in our grey and depressing weather, so just after Christmas we flew to Benidorm with my mother, my brother Roger and his partner Jeannette. We had very nice weather, and all in all a great time.
Except for the new years eve celebration: my mother fell and broke her wrist 10 minutes before midnight, and just after the fireworks we were driving with howling sirens through Benidorm.
We spend the first 4 hours of the new year in Spanish hospitals. Luckily the wrist was not broken badly, no problem to fly back.
Anyway: this is a sketch of old houses on the seafront of Villajoyosa, a village 10 km south of Benidorm.
The last location sketch of 2014, with the best wishes for 2015.