Las Vegas shooting

Sometimes an image becomes haunting.
This drawing is based on a picture that was featured in the newspapers regarding the Las Vegas shooting on Oct 1st. Three festival visitors trying to escape from the gunfire.
It tells more than pictures of corpses or guns.
I did these kinds of drawings before in 2013, a monthly series called Timeline. Trying out what makes an image work. I might redo it. It has a good learning curve.
This one was made in about 20 minutes.

No right turn: La Cienega

I am lagging behind with the Timeline series (on the 15th of each month I choose a picture to redraw).
I already picked the photographs, but I didn't take the time to redraw them yet.
On the 15th of July we were travelling through California, no newspaper, no Internet. So I picked from my own photographs, one that I made one night on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Don't ask me why, but this is my favourite photo of the trip. Just a parked yellow schoolbus in the yellow neonlight. I am seriously considering to turn this into a painting.
New developments around this drawing: it turned into a first page of a comic noir: "No right turn". See the following posts!

2013, so far.

This is the first 6 months of 2013, an intermediate report.
As you may recall, each 15th of every month I choose a (news)picture to redraw; assembled it looks like this.
Not very encouraging. War in Mali and Syria, demonstrations in Bulgaria and Turkey, burning factories in Bangladesh and terrorist attacks in Boston. I am afraid the next 6 months won't be that much better.
For the original photographers (who have the reproduction rights) see the original posts:
January, February, March, April, May, June.

Timeline June: Taksim square

Timeline series (each 15th of the month I choose a news picture with graphic quality).
This time the riots in Istanbul, on Taksim square. There seem to be riots and discontent everywhere around the world.
This drawing was based on a picture by fellow Urban sketcher Samantha Zaza. She  lives near Taksim in Istanbul, and reports on the Taksim events on her blog: http://harikaszaza.blogspot.com/

It's half a year now that I do "Timeline", I'll post the first combined result tomorrow.

Timeline May: Bangladesh

Tineline, May 15th. Bangladesh in the news, the factories producing our cheap clothing are falling apart.


The factory this man worked for went up in fire, so he lost his job and the means to support his family. But that was the least of his concerns: he was sitting there, desperately hoping for good news from a missing family member.

Original photo by Pieter van den Boogert.

I just discovered the photographer made an impressive photo essay on clothing, see
www.pietervandenboogert.com

Timeline April: Martin Richard

Timeline (every 15th of the month I choose an image to draw) was easy this time: the Boston Marathon attack. Enough horrible pictures of the explosions aftermath, but none as impressive as this one.
This is the 8th year old boy Martin Richard, who got killed in the bomb explosion. His sister lost a leg, his mother suffered from brain damage. And he lost his life, only because he went looking for his father to finish the marathon.
May we all live by the words of the drawing that he put on Facebook: no more hurting people.

Timeline March

March 15, 2013. Another drawing in the Timeline series (I pick a newspicture every 15th of the month, I hope in december all these images together will tell something of 2013).
This is a young woman in Sofia protesting against the Bulgarian government after a man called  Dimitrov burnt himself as protest against corruption and unemployment. Original photo by Valentina Petrova.

Timeline February

February 15th: I choose another news image.
(remember: I'll do this every 15th of each month this year. The series will be called Timeline and I hope that next December it will tell something of the past year).

February 15th: the world press photo awards were made public.
This one was amazing, won the 2nd prize in "on spot news".
The photographer Fabio Bucciarelli made this picture in Aleppo, Syria.
It tells about a fighter ready to kill, but also very jumpy and afraid of being killed.

Timeline: January

A new year, a new project.
This year I am planning to make a drawing each month, based on an image in the newspaper or on the internet that hit be somehow. I am planning to do this every 15th of the month (an arbitrary date, it's just the date that this idea came up). I hope that in december these 12 pictures will tell something of the year that has passed. I will choose the images on their graphic quality, and they will be done in black/white with simple coloured area's.
This is a striking image of French soldiers landing in Mali. When looking for it I found as much as 4 different versions of this picture. Original photo by Eric Feferberg.