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).