More Sketchcrawl

I tried a different technique, on larger format, of the people enjoying the music of the band "Miserabel".

Sketchcrawl sketches 2

A guy selling marmelade and self made juices, made during the sketchcrawl.

Sketchcrawl sketches 1

A Sketchcrawl sketch: Kelsey, Jacqueline and Pim in action.

Sketchcrawl 39

Gisteren hadden we een geslaagde sketchcrawl! We stonden in Heerlen bij het raadhuis, tijdens de kunstmarkt, als onderdeel van de Jaarmarkt. Het was ondanks de straffe wind toch wel goed weer: fris, maar wel met een fraai zonnetje.
Ook was er veel live muziek, dat dan ook een gewillig onderwerp voor veel tekeningen vormde.
We waren met 18 crawlers van 3 nationaliteiten; vooral het enthousiasme van de groep was erg geslaagd.
Bovenste rij vlnr: Nico, Pam, Glenis, Arthur, Ruud, Robert, Margriet, Agnes, Annette, Alma.
Onderste rij: Maria, Pim, René, Jos, Ankie, Tineke, Kelsey. Op de foto ontbreekt alleen Jacqueline.

Yesterday we had our 4th Limburg Sketchcrawl, this time in Heerlen. There was an art fair, with a lot of music and artists selling their work. We were lucky enough to have good weather, fresh but sunny (let's briefly forget about the wind, it's still the Netherlands). The group was quite large, 18 people of 3 nationalities, but the enthusiasm of the participants was heart-warming.
As always, I'll post the results the coming few days, on http://sketchcrawllimburg.blogspot.nl/

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.

More Chemelot

Another lunchtime sketch today, somewhere on the chemical plant "Chemelot" (a.k.a. DSM-Geleen). Actually it was just five minutes walk, but it took some walking around to find an interesting spot.
Nowadays I am trying to be more carefull about choosing the right angle/composition, and what to draw and (occasionally) what to leave out.
I deliberately stopped a little early, in order not to lose myself into those little details that sometimes spoil a drawing. Did the last enhancements at home, just by memory, to try and catch what my eye remembered seeing.
I will still stick to reality, but I more and more feel that trying to capture the "spirit" of the subject is more important than correctly fitting in all the details.

Sketchcrawl april 20th

I am organizing another sketchcrawl next sarurday (I know, the real one was last saturday, but I was busy). This time: art market, Heerlen, 13.00 hours, assemble at the cityhall, entrance Geleenstraat. Want to join?

St. Odiliënberg

Another sketch returning from Roermond. A nice view across the fields to the Dutch village St. Odiliënberg. The church is the Basilica of the Saints Plechemus, Wiro and Otger. I must admit I never heard of them, but they founded this church in around AD 765. There is not much left of the original Roman basilica, most was "restored" in the 19th century, destroyed in the 2nd World War and rebuilt in the 50's.

Herkenrather Kapelle

Weather has been horrible for outside drawing lately; snow, frost and freezing wind. But since a few days the weather has improved!
So yesterday, returning from a visit to a client in Roermond, I passed this little chapel in the middle of some bare fields. It was located just across the border in Germany, and there it stood: quiet and alone, guarded by two huge solemn trees.
Time to stop the car and draw!

A large hat

 

Another life portrait session. This is Anne; she wore a very large flaboyant hat, and had a nice delicate face. Goal was to paint without linework or preliminary study; just go for it, using large brushes with dynamic strokes.

I am the most content about the second try, below the first painting. Both took about one hour to make, acrylic paint on paper 50x60cm.

Ton van der Velden

Ton van der Velden, one of the directors of Tebodin (the engineering company I work for), went into retirement last week. I was honoured to be asked to make this farewell present: a drawing of the Chemelot ACN plant in Geleen.
The last 15 years Ton was responsible for the international growth of our company in Eastern Europe, the middle east and south east Asia, but in the 90's he was director of Tebodin Maastricht. During that time this was one of the projects he worked on.
I handed the drawing over to Ton last thursday evening in our main office in The Hague; we had a good party afterwards. I really hope this drawing will be a token of our gratitude for everything he did for Tebodin.

Some of you may recall an earlier version of this drawing, made 3 months ago. Unfortunately that drawing was made in a sketchbook, so I couldn't tear it out. As the subject was so fitting for Ton's present, I remade the drawing (again on location) on decent paper 2 weeks ago.
The drawings was fitted in a nice frame 45x55cm, but I forgot to make a picture of that.

Carceri d'invenzione

Always loved Piranesi's work (1720-1778); I like his drawings even more than his etchings. Especially the "Carceri d'invenzione" series.
So I was thrilled to be able to visit the Piranesi exhibition in London (in the sir John Soane museum). As far as I am concerned, the highlight of the exhibition was a fantastic drawing of an architectural fantasy, consisting only of red chalk lines and brown ink. It inspired me to make this fantasy in the same style. My own carceri d'invenzione.

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.

Broken glass

This is what happens when my wife drops my stained glass window. This used to be "Babels Ark" (see: http://www.renefijten.blogspot.nl/2012/11/babels-ark.html).
Repairing this glasspiece is even more painstaking than making a new one. But let look on the bright side: I am now becoming a restoration expert on stained glassed windows!

Stoke Newington: Albion road

This is Albion road in Stoke Newington, one of the London suburbs.
It's the part of town where my daughter Rianne lives presently. I was waiting there for the night bus N73, in order to return home.
In my eyes it's a typical London suburban street, with rows of small colourful shops mostly run by Pakistan, Turkish or Chinese shopkeepers. London must be one of the most multicultural cities I've ever visited.

Brief visit to London

I made a short visit to London, to visit my daughter, the Sir John Soane museum and the Egyptian part of British museum.
I flew yesterday morning as early as 7 a.m., and returned to Maastricht his morning at 9.30 a.m.

Above a sketch I made in a café Costa, near Spitalfields.
Here an impression of the fish and chips luch, that we took at a local pub near the British museum. The F&C were not that good, not warm enough, and quite expensive. But it filled well.

Palmtree in the snow

Palmtrees in the middle of winter!
I noticed these two palmtrees today, standing in the front lawn of the neighbour of our veterinarian (Provinciale weg, Oirsbeek).

They were located under a plastic sheet, held together with wires, to protect them against snow and cold. 

Standing as a symbol of our longing for warmer days.

Winter in March

What can I say. I hate this winter. I made this sketch this afternoon, during lunchbreak, looking out from my office window over a fresh layer of 15 cm of snow.
I mean: it's already halfway March, I should be doing the first chores in my garden by now. Instead I am clearing snow from the pavement in front of my house. Grmmmmpfff.

Marlies

This time I think it went better with the portrait session.

Last Saturday during art class we had to try again with this 4-stage exercise.

First draw the lines directly with paint, then block in the values with transparent strokes.

Below you see how this looked like after these 2 stages (the image shows the (very patient) model Marlies).

Contrary to earlier paintings I wanted to have a dark background, to enhance the profile of the face. 

Even tough I don't think it was all that bad, please keep in mind that pure resemblance was not the issue.

I also wanted to use green (terra verte) as background, as this is the complimentary colour to some flesh colours and red.

As a matter of fact, this exercise was planned to last 2 sessions, but I had to do this in only one (total two hours), so I had to work very fast. As a side effect the overlapping transparent strokes mixed with the not yet dried up ones, which unfortunately gave a muddy effect, not what I wanted.

Then stage 3: painting smaller strokes with non-transparent paint.
By the way, I used acrylic paint (W&N's Galleria paint on 300 grams Steinbach paper 60x70cm)
Now I kicked in the colours, trying to work with smaller and better defined strokes towards the centre of the face. But always trying to keep something of the first 2 stages and the paper visible.
At some point I had to add white paint highlights again, on the picture below it looks harsher than in reality (I have not yet mastered making pictures which represent the colours decently).
Still, wisely using white is something I have to learn to improve on.
Halfway this process the model left, and we had to work "blind". That was done on purpose, as we should concentrate on making a good painting. Like I said before, resemblance was not quite the issue.
The result is the picture below, just before I went to stage 4.

Stage 4 meant adding strokes and details with palette knife.
Now that's really difficult. Imagine, you have already spent a lot of time adding colours and textures, keeping the total painting in balance and the face recognizable in ever more subtle tones, and then you have to attack it again with the coarse and blunt palette knife.
It's were I went wrong last time.

So I tried to mix my colours with precision, and add them with restraint.

At each stroke I considered the added value, with as guiding principle that it should add and enhance the liveliness, but should never overshout the already painted parts.

Each stroke took a lot of time.




The fist image of this post shows the final result.
I should do this more often, but should also take more time than the two hours it took me to do this painting.

I should have stopped earlier

Portrait painting session, during art class.
Goal was to use different painting application methods in one painting, and leaving each visible.
First: drawing with paint, without pencil outlining.
Second: transparent washes, leaving each stroke visible.
Third: painting with bold strokes, non transparent.
Fourth: application of paint by palette knife (paletmes).

Below you see pictures of these four stages, from top left to bottom right. That one was was the last palette knife version.
I should have stopped at the third stage (see the result above).

I went through all these stages in about two hours time. The model was tired by then.