Girl

Just a quick drawing (maybe 10 minutes). After a drawing by the French painter Soluto.
Black pencil and watercolour.

Sand quarry in Meers

On location sketch, this afternoon.
A quarry excavating sand from the river Maas. I have run a lot of times past this quarry, it's on one of my regular routes. Today I went there to make this sketch.

Waiting for the rain

Made this drawing out of nothing. And the title seemed fitting somehow.
Waiting for the rain.

Elsloo in spring

Lunchtime today. the snow and frost have gone, it's still fresh but the sun is doing its best.
I got out to make this drawing. It's in Elsloo, and hard to see but the village is on top of a hill. I am standing on the hill on the other side of a little stream. The gardens are winding down the slope to the stream.
At least with these bare trees you can have some nice see-throughs.
This what it looked like in reality,
 

Where does inspiration come from?

I thought it might be nice to show where I get inspiration from.

I saw these 2 apple trees during my Sunday morning run last week, on the road between Amstenrade and Merkelbeek.
The right tree has been cantilevered for years, each time I pass it I always wonder why it hasn't fallen over yet, especially when it's in full bloom.










 

I made these 2 quick ideas the same day (BTW. I must have noted the wrong date, it was the 11th). The left sketch was worked out as a glass fusion item, which I may show later.
The right sketch served as idea for a larger painting.

This is the basis of the painting: cardboard and cement (for tiles), on a wooden board about 50x60cm.

I will paint over it soon. posts to follow.
The painting is supposed to be inspired by Jean Dubuffet.

High speed train

Visit to Magdebug, Germany. For business. We took the ICE (German high speed train, at times they run approx 250km/hour). I had no time to sketch in Magdeburg itself, so I made this quick one, during a stop before entering some station. I forgot which one, somewhere between Magdeburg and Hannover. I barely had time to sketch the dominant shapes, the rest I did out of memory.

2 Models

Model painting of Julia.
2 positions, each took one hour to make.
Acrylic, 50x60cm.
The left one looked good as preliminary sketch, but I overworked the actual painting.

Stein

A quick sketch of a shed in Stein. 10-15 minutes at most. Not an Urban sketch, I saw this scene during my weekly Friday run (only 8 km this time). A cowshed, on a muddy path near the canal. No way that you could get near this place by car of bike. And when running I don't carry sketch gear. So I took a picture, and drew it at home.

It's the grey season, the frost is gone, and you can smell that the nature is ready for the first days with temperatures of double digits. Can't wait.
On request by Michael: the picture I took.

2 portraits

I am still doing live portrait sessions on saturday mornings. The above is a portrait of Annemiek. I used contrasting colours: red and green, the opposite sides of the colour wheel. Mixed it becomes grey. Trying how far I could go with these colours.

Below a painting of Julia. The setup went pretty well, that's what I show here. Unfortunately the final execution was less convincing.

2 random sketches

 A few random sketches. The weather is pretty bad: it's freezing, sometimes snow with a hard eastern wind. Not the weather to go out.

I made the left drawing at the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. Famous for it's old Dutch Masters like Bosch, Breughel and Rembrandt. But also Dali, Malevitch and Ernst.
This is a small painting by Esias Boursse dating back from 1660.  I was fascinated by this painting, a rural scene of a woman washing clothes, a very interesting composition.

The bottom drawing is a lunchbreak sketch. It's a cryptic drawing, with a hidden meaning. A Dutch word with 8 letters. "paasvuur". Referring to local traditions to set fire to stacks of wood to celebrate Eastern.