Déesse

Déesse. The french word for Goddess sounds so much better.
This was meant as an excercise for the upcoming new assignment in our model class: a Klimt-like painting. Composition is very important in the Klimt paintings, with subtle and bleak faces or bodies inserted, almost overwhelmed by the lavish decorated dresses. This is a try to see how it works out.

More Lohr am Main

Lohr am Main. Also made during the business trip last week, but it needed a little finishing touch.
I had no time to draw during the trip yesterday, so you'll have to do with the one of last week.

Brussel today

I am furious, and totally tired of all that shit.

Two times Julia

 

Last of the live model classes (for now). We had Julia again, a lovely model. The object of todays exercise was to combine coloured paper, oil pastels and acrylic paint into a painting.

The basic idea was to apply transparent acrylic colour to leave the pasted on coloured paper as "visible" as possible. But as the paper was too vivid and saturated, I had no choice but to paint rather opaque.

The second one (below) was more transparent. Each painting, 50x70cm, took an hour to make.

Lohr am Main

Another business trip, another sketch.
Of the Bayern (Germany) town of "Lohr am Main" this time. All the hotels within 50km of Frankfurt were booked because of a large congress, we had to travel a lot more to the south to get a decent hotel.
It had the advantage that we could visit this cute little town in the evening.

The drawing is not very good, it became dark too quickly, and somehow the drawing did not take off too well, right from the start. You can't always have a winner.

Public toilet

Still a sketch from last week in Bitterfeld, Germany. The park across the road from the hotel had this old public red masonry toilet building. It was closed, maybe forever, maybe waiting for the summer.germ

Fused glass dish

One of my other projects: glassworks. I recently finished this fused glass dish, 30x30cm.
It consists of two layers of fused glass, with glass enamel in between. The supports are made from bent sandblasted glass. It looks lovely on our living room table.

Bitterfeld (Germany)

On the road again, during my now almost weekly business trips. To Bitterfled this time, half an hour drive east of Leipzig.
At last I had the time to make a few on-location sketches. This is one, the market square of Bitterfeld.
Even though Bitterfeld is a common German town, there are not so many subjects fit for nice urban sketching. The town became big as result of huge chemical industry and browncoal mining, but as these activities were founded in the dreary former East German DDR period, the town has its share of horrible "plattenbau" and other derelict buildings. It tries to recover, but still bears the scars.

Bingelrade

A lot of travelling for work these days, and not so much chance for on-location drawing.  It gets too dark too early, and the weather is horrible.
Like this morning, during my 14 km run in the rain, finding my way through the hills between Jabeek and Bingelrade. I would have liked to draw the scene, but I would not have been be able to do so, because of the steady falling rain. Besides, the hardly paved country road was far too muddy for getting there by car.
So I took a picture with my camera, and turned it into a little drawing this evening.

The Urban Sketching Handbook

I had forgotten about this one, that was a nice surprise in my mailbox!
Veronica Lawlor made this nice book about Reportage and documentary drawing, Tips and techniques for Drawing on Location.

And I am proud to say that one of my sketches features in it, a 2011 action sketch of cowrunning. I think it was the last time our group joined the local Carnaval-Koerennen games. Anyway, like every year I managed to make this little sketch.

The book is very nice, with a lot of different artists collaborating. Even though the illustrations are sometimes rather small, it's still a treasure of ideas.

If you are interested, click the link below for the Dutch online booksellers.
Link to buy the book on Bol.com