Maastricht Jodenstraat

Just an in-between sketch. I still have a few Rome sketches to post, but for a change of taste here is one I made last friday.
Made during a (somewhat extended) lunchbreak. The Jodenstraat in Maastricht.

Bernini on Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona, in the centre of Rome is probably the most crowded square. I made this drawing of the big foutain in the middle (Fontane di Fiumi, fountain of the four waters). the four sides represent 4 continents, with its major rivers symbolized: the Donau, the Nile, The Ganges and Rio de la Plata.
The fountain was made by Bernini, and features in the Dan Brown book of course.
I wanted to draw the oblisk (on top), and the church (St. Agnese in Agone) in the background as well, but all together would have made the fountain too small. Especially in a A5 booklet.

Rome: forum Augustus

Drawn along the central Via dei fori imperiali, in the midst of the excavations.
The strong forms of the pinetrees struck me in this particular view.

Rome: EUR

This is the Rome as Mussolini would have liked to see.
He wanted to show the world how brilliant fascism was (I am cynical), so he organized a World Expo meant to open in 1942, the "Esposizione Universale di Roma".
A whole new borough, just outside the city center, with wide lanes and impressive neoclassical buildings.
Quite a megalomatic enterprise, and this building was meant to be the highlight: the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro. (the palace for the civilization of work).
It's also sometimes referred to as "the square colosseum".

Anyway, a worldwar interfered, and the area was never totally finished. What is left is a city layout and some stark buildings, whose architecture is not even all that bad. It's meant to impress, and it does that very well.
I just get a foul taste in my mouth recalling where these ideas originated.

Castel Sant'angelo

A sketch of the Castel Sant'angelo.
The one from the books of Dan Brown.
We had just returned from the tourist ridden Vatican city, and it was nice a quiet along the river bank.

Rome Colosseum

Two sketches of the Colosseum in Rome. The bottom one was made while standing in line to get a ticket.
I mean, the amount of tourists in Rome was huge, in this case we had o stand in line for 3/4 of an hour. Nothing compared to the row in front of the Vatican Museum though - 2 hours.....

But I had to be quick.
The top one was made in the Colosseum itself.
I had forgotten how impressive the building is.

Rome Pantheon

Rome the Pantheon.
I visited the city with my son, Mart. A good father-son moment in time. We had a terrific time: enjoyed the immense heat, saw all the beautiful places, enjoyed good coffee and italian food. What more to wish for.

Rome. Forum Romanum

I am in rome right now, visiting the city with my son mart. I am writing on an iphone, no long stories this time. More to tell When i am back. Drawing of the Forum Romanum. 

More Liege

Liège: fleamarket

Had a nice day of making drawings in Liège (Luik) yesterday. Nice weather.
Here a scene on the large fleamrket in Outremeuse, held each fridaymorning.

Maastricht, sketchcrawl

My (new) computer broke, and I lost the last month of data and scanned drawings. As well the digitally coloured versions of Akai Usagi.
So I am lagging behind with my blogposts, and trying to find out what I am missing anyway.
Here are two quick sketches made during the last sketchcrawl, some 2 weeks ago; it was the only bad weather day so far this summer. Bad luck.




I made these two sketches as quick composition demonstration drawings for the only sketcher that showed up that day: Jos van Doorenmalen.
They each took me about 5 minutes to make.

Akai Usagi

I wrote and drew a three page comic story about an old man meeting some samurai.
The drawings were drawn in ink in a regular A4 Moleskine, scanned and colored with the program Gimp. I used a touchscreen laptop (a HP360) and a stylos to draw the colored backgrounds. It works very nice and pretty fast.
The word Akai Usagi means: Red Rabbit.
For the printable version: see Issuu: http://issuu.com/norightturn/docs/akai_usagi

Glassworks: haantje

My latest glass object: a little cock.
I had already finished it some weeks ago, but I still had to fix it to a plinth.
We tore down an cherry tree two years ago, and the wood serves well for these small plinths.
But it's hard wood: it takes some effort to saw a piece off.
The object was a present for my Mothers birthday, but I am almost 2 months overdue by now. :)

Old cats

We made two little memorials in leaded glass for our late cats Marsha and Yana. They are buried below the maple tree, where they used to sit in the shade on warm sunny days. 

We are very happy with our new family members: Mitzie and Miyo. But the old ones are not forgotten. 

Miyo

Our new kitten since a week: Miyo. Mitzie has a companion (she still has to get used o it).

Sketchcrawl: Dominicanen

Sketchcrawl yesterday. After weeks of the most beautiful weather, we had a regular autumn storm yesterday. Wind, rain, cold, code orange, not the kind of weather to go out and sketch outside.
Understandably hardly anyone showed up: just Jos and I.
I found myself a nice spot with some perfect coffee in the most beautiful bookstore of the Netherlands, probably even the world. The bookstore is located in an medieval gothic church, part of a former monastery in the center of Maastricht. They made a three story steel structure in it, looking like a bookcase itself. And it can be removed without any damage to the church, if the bookstore will be gone. Beautiful. Architecture at its best.

Building site

Sketch made on location, on a building supervised of our firm Tebodin, in Waalwijk, the Netherlands.
Building a test lab for car interior materials.

A special day

A special day, the day we heard we are going to be grandfather and grandmother early next year. My daughter Rianne and Bob are expecting a baby. We are thrilled.

It's a feeble chalkline on that long and winding road called life; the landscape around you is still the same but suddenly there is a 'before' and 'after'. 

Strasbourg: Petit France

Strasbourg is an old city with a beautiful centre with old (almost german) type of houses.
Here two scenes in Petit France.

When I was drawing the bottom sketch, I was accompanied by beautiful classical guitar and flute music. Vivaldi mostly.
Just before I finished they moved on, I did not even have the chance to tip them.
A picture taken of my while sketching.

Graff in Strass

There was another 3 day drawing event in Strasbourg: graffiti artists were making murals near the St. Thomas church. The city had prepared scaffolding with large wood walls.
Here is Gilbert at work, who paints dreamlike fairytale images. And I copied parts of a piece by Bwexo, specialized in wildstyle lettering. Hard to read.
I talked to some of the guys, real nice blokes, dedicated to their work.