Crete: Spinalonga

Spinalonga was formerly a leprosy island, untill 1950 or so (when medicine came available). The area is a well known tourist attraction, and quite nice to visit. We had to wait for the return ferry, which gave me the opportunity to make this sketch of the entrance gate. I couldn't finish the paintwork, as the boat arrived.

Adiemus (Karl Jenkins)

Last Friday and Saturday, Gertie and I sang in the Limburgs Concert Choir, for the Dutch premiere of the renowned symfony "Adiemus" by Karl Jenkins. It was a symfonic piece with about 120 singers, 3 solist singers and about 40 musicians. We also sang South African choir pieces. We sang in Landgraaf and the concert house in Maastricht, completely sold out. We have rehearsed since april and finally it paid of to a great concert. We are very proud we could participate, under the guidance of Steven van Kempen. 

The choir will perform in January in New York in the Carnegy Hall, unfortunately we can't be there.

Alfa trial run

 Ran a trial run yesterday, through mud and rain, through forests and narrow cartroads. 12,5km, >200m height difference, in 1 hour 18 minutes. I finished about nr. 140 out of 300 runners. (I made a mistake, resulting in a missing time registration, but I know what I did). Which is very good considering there were only 3 guys my age or older.

AI images (5): the burning towers

 

Another AI experiment. I started with the images of the last post (ai-images (4) the wing, september), the drawing and its AI-image (top left and middle). Then I made a new drawing, which actually turned out to be horrible (not shown here).

I lost interest and eventually played around with the blue AI-image and combined it with another AI image theme that I created. Some burning towers in a desolate landscape (top right). That resulted into a new drawing (bottom left). 

Then I generated a new AI image with reverse prompting. But that one became rather like a fake watercolour drawing. But I also experimented with turning a sketch into an image using AI. Rather interesting what the system came up with.

Crete: views from the terrace

Two quick sketches I made while enjoying coffee at a terrace, somewhere in Crete. Top one: the Lassithi plateau, fields with windmills and far away mountains. Bottom one, Piskopiano, from our appartment to the other side of the valley. The idea was strong inkwork and toned down watercolour.

Portrait in pastel

 

Anoter live portrait session, with washed out pastel colours only. I painted the same model before, see 

https://renefijten.blogspot.com/2025/02/portrait-in-acrylic-and-charcoal.html 

Crete: Windmills

A row of windmills on the edge of the Lassithi plateau, in the center of Crete (Greece).
 

Exhibition in Laboe (Germany)

 

The coming few months there is an exhibition of my painting works in Laboe, Germany. 15 of my paintings (oil, acrylic and/or watercolour) are featured there.

It's up above Kiel, quite far from where I live, but in the good hands of Anja Klein (a friend and former collegue).

Armand

 

Live portrait session, this morning at the atleier Annemeik Jongen, Armand. Washed out pastel on paper.

Crete: sunday morning in Mochos

 

Last Sunday (our last day in Greece) we were driving to the Lassithi plateau, in the middle of Crete. It was Sunday morning, and we were sitting on a sunny terrace. Across were a few men enjoying coffee and Raki after Mass.

Crete: Agios Nikolaos harbour

 

Another drawing from Greece, I spotted this little boat under repair in the harbour of Agios Nikolaos. Pencil and ink on location, watercolour and some hatching in our appartment.

Crete, Greece: Piskopiano

 

Just returned from Crete, Greece. We had a great week with lovely weather. This is the view from our appartment, overlooking the hills, the sea and the sun, from our own private swimming pool.

The appartment was really nice, brandnew and very well detailed (architecturally speaking).

Clemensdomein

 

Clemensdomein, in Brunssum, near Merkelbeek. It's an old church (from about 1000AD), a few km from my house. For years this church was surrounded by a large and renowned monastry. But the monastry was abandoned and demolished some 10 years ago. You can view the church again how it looked like before 1900.

Coney Island after the rain

 

Finished another oil painting, on board (MDF) 50x60cm. It is called: "Coney Island after the rain", and was based on a picture I took in 2019 during our visit to NYC. The actual building is not so gloom, and I added a 70s car instead of a few campers. But the actual lookthrough towards the "wonder wheel" is really there.

I finished the painting for the upcoming painting exhibition in Laboe, Germany.

Vaesrade in bamboo pen and ink

 

This afternoon, drinig with my bicycle through the hills near our house. Quick ink sketch (with reed pen) and some watercolour on Canson aquarel paper.

Cadillac Fleetwood 1952

 

Went to a vintage car meeting in Heerlen (Cruise-in). I have drawn on these occasions before, always nice to see real old cars. This was a beautiful CadillacFleetwood 1952, a huge car, but beautifully restored. 

AI images (4). The wing.

 

Next installment of my AI game. I used the Nike of Samothrace drawing (with colours) to generate a prompt. As stated in the last post, it resulted in different images. I liked the interior one the best, but as you can see the statue was gone. I replaced it for a single wing (representing the Nike statue), and added some smoke. See above drawing, made with a pilot Parrellel pen with non-waterproof ink. 

Then I put it in the generator again, which led to horrible results. All very soft, girly like, fake watercolour images of pigeons flying in clouds of flowers, in pink, red, yellow and green. Yuck. 

So I had to tweak the prompts a bit  to get my wing and ruined buildings back again. And I grew tired of all the red, so I guided the generator towards grey and sepia. The result (through GPT-4o and GPT image) is shown below (bottom right). I will use that one to make a new drawing. It's time for the wing to leave the building.

AI images experiment (3)

 

As you can see I gave the ink drawing of the last AI experiment installment some shades. (done with a pentel Parrallel pen which has non-permanent red ink). Now I put this through the reversed prompting program, which translates the image into a text (which you can reuse again to generate new images). Interesting enough, different text machines deliver totally different images, of which the focus is different. Sometimes drawing style, sometimes colour, sometimes subject. The last one (Florence) even specified a red bird, which the picture didn't even show. Pictures all made by Stable Diffusion 3.0. It clearly shows how you need to work your prompting to get the results you want.

The images: top left: original drawing; right: Joycaption; second row left: GPT4o-mini; right: Florence.

1/2 marathon 2025

 

Ran a half marathon yesterday. In Heerlen, the Obvion run. Finished at 1 hour 58 minutes as number 304 out of 450 runners. The weather was perfect: 14 degrees, sunny and a little wind. 

I am rather proud of myself, not so bad for a 67 year old guy.

Terstraten (Nuth)

A sketch I made on a nice warm afternoon, in a small Hamlet called Terstraten, a few kilometers from my house. Already zome weeks ago, but had no time to post this earlier.

Vosges: Fraize market

 

During the painting week we made quick sketches on the market of Fraise. Forecast was rain, so we visited the place and took the sketches home to the B&B, as inspiration of the paintings we made there. In fact, it remained dry, so in the end we were able to paint in the garden. But on a lesser note: the paintings were horrible. I am not going to post those here.

Vosges Clefcy (2)

Two paintings I made in the painting week in France, based on the leaves and trees in the garden. The top one is a birch tree, made on board, tile mortar and acrylic paint, size 40x50. It looks better in reality. The second one is also acrylic on board 40x50, but with glued on paper to get some texture.
 

Vosges: Clefcy Ptit monde (1)

Last week I attended to a painting week in France, in the Vosges region. We did 5 days of painting with a lovely group, under the guidance of the gifted artist Annemiek Jongen. We stayed at a B&B in Clefcy called Ptit Monde, they were very hospitable and served great food.

 

Not all works were great. This is a view to a house in Plainfaing, paintedon location. It was supposed to be in the style of the Dutch impressionist Isaac Israels, I am not sure about that, but it was a great exercise.
 

Saumur, the castle (2)

 

Another view of the castle, this time overlooking the city and the Loire.

Saumur (France), the castle (1)

 

Just returned from a lovely holiday in France, in the Loire valley. We stayed at a holiday camp near Saumur, together with my son and our grandchildren Finn (6) and Zara (5). One of the days I went up to the castle, high above the town, and made a few sketches. One of those is this one, on tinted paper.

Robots on Mars

 

I made this painting on request of my grandson, Jake. He wanted something with planets and rockets. So I made this one, size 50x60cm. He was very happy with this.

 

AI images experiment (2)

I made above ink drawing (another step after the last AI image of the previous session, I added the Greek statue of Nike of Samothrace, it can be seen in the Louvre). I did reverse prompting of this image, and used that text to generate new images. I used different AI generation programs, even though the themes are similar, the outcome is very different.

From top left to top right: GPT image1, google imagen4, Stable Diffusion 3.0. Bottom: Classipeint XL, Flux dev, google imagen3.

 

AI images (1): the pool

 

An experiment with creative use of AI. 

I used an old drawing (La piscine des erreurs, from september 2016), applied reverse prompting and used the resulting texts (with some adaptations) to generate a few AI images. I used stable diffusion 3.0 through the Openart platform. Most of the results were not to my liking, I noticed that you will need some tweaking of the prompts to get nice results. Then I used one of the better images as inspiration to make a new drawing. See above, the one with the drapes. 

Then I converted the drawing through reverse prompting into an AI image again, see below. I will use that one to draw something new again. Interesting results. 

 

Amersfoort, USk-NL day (2)

 

Forgot to post this one. Not 100% content, but that's okay. My aunt lives in Amersfoort, she is 99 years old, will be 100 in November. She has a painting of this scene hanging in her apartment, dating from about 1940 or so. But even though that one is a winter scene, nothing much has changed since then.

Helle (Nuth)

 

Just returned from a trip with my bike. Went to Helle, a small hamlet near my town. I stood in the fileds, along a footpath (which is part of the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim route to Compostella in Spain), to make this drawing. Forgot my watercolour, but I am okay with this.

Linkin Park in Arnhem

 

I went to the Linkin Park concert in Arnhem, last Thursday. Together with my son, Mart. A great concert and a valuable father-son moment.

Amersfoort, USk-NL day

 

We organized another National Urban Sketching day in Amersfoort. There were about 300 sketchers in town. Even gthough it was quite hot (>31 degrees Celcius), we had a great day. But it is a beautiful old Dutch town. With canals, tiny streets, ancient gabeled houses, and these kind of old fortifications. I tried watercolour pencils (W&N) on toned paper, with some parts in white gouache.

Agnes, portrait in oils

 

Last live portrait session before the holiday. Agnes, oil paint on board, 40x50 cm. Took me about 2 hours to make. IT was a long time since I used this technique: no drawing, add painted directly and washed it out. I used water based oil paint by Talens-Cobra.

Stein: remains of the castle

 

2 pages from my sketchbook: made this morning: the ruins of the former castle of Stein. I was in the neighbourhood for some bicycle maintenance; I took the opportunity to go and sketch the castle.

Nash Airflyte 1951

I was cycling through Heerlen, when I happened to spot this beautiful, freshly restored Nash from 1951. It stood on a parking lot, luckily I happened to have my sketchgear with me.
 

Little monsters

 

2 fantasy monsters, just scribbling away.

Coney Island

Started a new painting, after a picture I took on Coney Island, NY, in 2019. In the sketch you can see the Ferris wheel between the buildings. Size 60x50, oilpainting. this is the basics: the underpainting. Just to show how I block in the large elements in toned areas. The real work begins now.