Jacqueline. Live portrait.

 

Monday morning live portrait session. Oilpainting on canvas, 40x50 cm. We worked two mornings on the same model. Last week we did the underpainting in burnt sienna and an mix of blue and raw umbur.

Today I added te skin tones, ochre, white, a little red and some burt sienna. 2 mornings each 2 hours.

Black Ink

Quick portrait in black ink. After a picture somewhere.

 

Brooklyn underpass

 

Recently fnished another painting. It's a scene of an subway underpass somewhere in Brooklyn. It's an oil painting 50x60cm. Unfortunately I can't get the photograph of the painting correct, it is less harsh than depicted in this post, and the yellow is glowing better than shown. Well it is all I can do.

Comics by Willem and Zara

 

The 26th, Second Christmas day, our children and grandchildren were here for a festive dinner. It was a great family moment. After dinner I helped Zara (the top drawing, she is 5 years) and Willem (the bottom one, he's 7 years now) to make Christmas comic stories. All about Christmas presents being stolen by either Aliens (Zara) or the Grinch (Willem). Luckily the presents came back where they belonged :)

Best wishes for these Festive days.

Best wishes for the Christmas days and may 2026 be a year of enjoyment and good health.

(based on a gouache painting I made on location in 's Hertogen Bosch december 2024).
 

Utrecht: Museum Speelklok

 

I am secretary of the Association of Dutrch Urban Sketchers. We have 2 new boardmembers, and one leaving, to get o know each other we had a lunch in Utrecht. Unfortunately it was too cold to sketch outside, so we went to a museum of automated musical instruments, like pianola, streetorgans, carrilions and clocks. The top one was cute: an automated Van Gogh puppet, who paints sunflowers every hour. And when he is finished the sunflowers turn around in the painting :) .

Maastricht Helmstraat (2)

 

A guy sitting in front of the entrance of a supermarket at the Helmstraat in Maastricht. I quietly observed him from the other side of the street. He was not a beggar, maybe homeless, or passing time, I don't know. Just before I finished he stood up and left.

Maastricht, Helmstraat

 

Maastricht, de Helmstraat. This morning. Ink and watercolour in a A5 Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.

2 men: portraits in ink

 

Two quick ink drawings, made this afternoon, based on pictures from the Internet, a photo by M. Odekerken (left) and a picture of some unknown Zapatista from Mexico (right).

Aunt Leny's anniversary: 100 years

 

My aunt Leny, living in Amersfoort, will celebrate her 100th birthday tomorrow. As a present I painted a scene of Amersfoort, at the Elleboogkerk. 

There is a little story attached to this scene. As long as I can remember my aunt has had a painting of exactly the same viewpoint hanging in above the dinnertable. But that painting dates from before WW2 (if I recall correctly). But it's a winter scene with lots of snow. Last summer I was in Amersfoort and I sketched on the same location, but I disliked that drawing. So I remade it with acryl gouache, here it is. Actually, nothing much changed during that time, only the trees are in bloom and they are a lot larger.

Update: 14 december: we had a great party yesterday to celebrate her birthday. Here you see both paintings next to each other :) .

 

Anja, live portrait

 

Anja, monday morning live portrait session. Same technique as last week. Took 2 hours to make.

Armand portrait

 

Some experimenting this morning. A live portrait session, Armand this time. Acrylic paint and charcoal. on bamboo paper treated with tilemortar. That's what gives it's gritty effect.

Comics with Zara

 

Sometimes our grandchild Zara (now 5 years old) stays over, and she always asks me to make a comic story together. We invent a story, she makes the drawings, and I add text and (most of) the colors.

The top one was made yesterday, the other one was made the day before Halloween.

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).