Maastricht Jodenstraat

Just an in-between sketch. I still have a few Rome sketches to post, but for a change of taste here is one I made last friday.
Made during a (somewhat extended) lunchbreak. The Jodenstraat in Maastricht.

Bernini on Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona, in the centre of Rome is probably the most crowded square. I made this drawing of the big foutain in the middle (Fontane di Fiumi, fountain of the four waters). the four sides represent 4 continents, with its major rivers symbolized: the Donau, the Nile, The Ganges and Rio de la Plata.
The fountain was made by Bernini, and features in the Dan Brown book of course.
I wanted to draw the oblisk (on top), and the church (St. Agnese in Agone) in the background as well, but all together would have made the fountain too small. Especially in a A5 booklet.

Rome: forum Augustus

Drawn along the central Via dei fori imperiali, in the midst of the excavations.
The strong forms of the pinetrees struck me in this particular view.

Rome: EUR

This is the Rome as Mussolini would have liked to see.
He wanted to show the world how brilliant fascism was (I am cynical), so he organized a World Expo meant to open in 1942, the "Esposizione Universale di Roma".
A whole new borough, just outside the city center, with wide lanes and impressive neoclassical buildings.
Quite a megalomatic enterprise, and this building was meant to be the highlight: the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro. (the palace for the civilization of work).
It's also sometimes referred to as "the square colosseum".

Anyway, a worldwar interfered, and the area was never totally finished. What is left is a city layout and some stark buildings, whose architecture is not even all that bad. It's meant to impress, and it does that very well.
I just get a foul taste in my mouth recalling where these ideas originated.

Castel Sant'angelo

A sketch of the Castel Sant'angelo.
The one from the books of Dan Brown.
We had just returned from the tourist ridden Vatican city, and it was nice a quiet along the river bank.

Rome Colosseum

Two sketches of the Colosseum in Rome. The bottom one was made while standing in line to get a ticket.
I mean, the amount of tourists in Rome was huge, in this case we had o stand in line for 3/4 of an hour. Nothing compared to the row in front of the Vatican Museum though - 2 hours.....

But I had to be quick.
The top one was made in the Colosseum itself.
I had forgotten how impressive the building is.

Rome Pantheon

Rome the Pantheon.
I visited the city with my son, Mart. A good father-son moment in time. We had a terrific time: enjoyed the immense heat, saw all the beautiful places, enjoyed good coffee and italian food. What more to wish for.

Rome. Forum Romanum

I am in rome right now, visiting the city with my son mart. I am writing on an iphone, no long stories this time. More to tell When i am back. Drawing of the Forum Romanum. 

More Liege

Liège: fleamarket

Had a nice day of making drawings in Liège (Luik) yesterday. Nice weather.
Here a scene on the large fleamrket in Outremeuse, held each fridaymorning.

Maastricht, sketchcrawl

My (new) computer broke, and I lost the last month of data and scanned drawings. As well the digitally coloured versions of Akai Usagi.
So I am lagging behind with my blogposts, and trying to find out what I am missing anyway.
Here are two quick sketches made during the last sketchcrawl, some 2 weeks ago; it was the only bad weather day so far this summer. Bad luck.




I made these two sketches as quick composition demonstration drawings for the only sketcher that showed up that day: Jos van Doorenmalen.
They each took me about 5 minutes to make.

Akai Usagi

I wrote and drew a three page comic story about an old man meeting some samurai.
The drawings were drawn in ink in a regular A4 Moleskine, scanned and colored with the program Gimp. I used a touchscreen laptop (a HP360) and a stylos to draw the colored backgrounds. It works very nice and pretty fast.
The word Akai Usagi means: Red Rabbit.
For the printable version: see Issuu: http://issuu.com/norightturn/docs/akai_usagi