Déesse

Déesse. The french word for Goddess sounds so much better.
This was meant as an excercise for the upcoming new assignment in our model class: a Klimt-like painting. Composition is very important in the Klimt paintings, with subtle and bleak faces or bodies inserted, almost overwhelmed by the lavish decorated dresses. This is a try to see how it works out.

More Lohr am Main

Lohr am Main. Also made during the business trip last week, but it needed a little finishing touch.
I had no time to draw during the trip yesterday, so you'll have to do with the one of last week.

Brussel today

I am furious, and totally tired of all that shit.

Two times Julia

 

Last of the live model classes (for now). We had Julia again, a lovely model. The object of todays exercise was to combine coloured paper, oil pastels and acrylic paint into a painting.

The basic idea was to apply transparent acrylic colour to leave the pasted on coloured paper as "visible" as possible. But as the paper was too vivid and saturated, I had no choice but to paint rather opaque.

The second one (below) was more transparent. Each painting, 50x70cm, took an hour to make.

Lohr am Main

Another business trip, another sketch.
Of the Bayern (Germany) town of "Lohr am Main" this time. All the hotels within 50km of Frankfurt were booked because of a large congress, we had to travel a lot more to the south to get a decent hotel.
It had the advantage that we could visit this cute little town in the evening.

The drawing is not very good, it became dark too quickly, and somehow the drawing did not take off too well, right from the start. You can't always have a winner.

Public toilet

Still a sketch from last week in Bitterfeld, Germany. The park across the road from the hotel had this old public red masonry toilet building. It was closed, maybe forever, maybe waiting for the summer.germ

Fused glass dish

One of my other projects: glassworks. I recently finished this fused glass dish, 30x30cm.
It consists of two layers of fused glass, with glass enamel in between. The supports are made from bent sandblasted glass. It looks lovely on our living room table.

Bitterfeld (Germany)

On the road again, during my now almost weekly business trips. To Bitterfled this time, half an hour drive east of Leipzig.
At last I had the time to make a few on-location sketches. This is one, the market square of Bitterfeld.
Even though Bitterfeld is a common German town, there are not so many subjects fit for nice urban sketching. The town became big as result of huge chemical industry and browncoal mining, but as these activities were founded in the dreary former East German DDR period, the town has its share of horrible "plattenbau" and other derelict buildings. It tries to recover, but still bears the scars.

Bingelrade

A lot of travelling for work these days, and not so much chance for on-location drawing.  It gets too dark too early, and the weather is horrible.
Like this morning, during my 14 km run in the rain, finding my way through the hills between Jabeek and Bingelrade. I would have liked to draw the scene, but I would not have been be able to do so, because of the steady falling rain. Besides, the hardly paved country road was far too muddy for getting there by car.
So I took a picture with my camera, and turned it into a little drawing this evening.

The Urban Sketching Handbook

I had forgotten about this one, that was a nice surprise in my mailbox!
Veronica Lawlor made this nice book about Reportage and documentary drawing, Tips and techniques for Drawing on Location.

And I am proud to say that one of my sketches features in it, a 2011 action sketch of cowrunning. I think it was the last time our group joined the local Carnaval-Koerennen games. Anyway, like every year I managed to make this little sketch.

The book is very nice, with a lot of different artists collaborating. Even though the illustrations are sometimes rather small, it's still a treasure of ideas.

If you are interested, click the link below for the Dutch online booksellers.
Link to buy the book on Bol.com

 

Silvana

Silvana, painted this morning at Model Class.
Acrylic and oil pastels, 50x70cm. Took me 2 hours to make.

Subterranian landscape

Just started drawing on a lazy Sunday evening.
First doodling around, then starting drawing with a fineliner, inventing the drawing on the go. Later washing it out with watercolour and brown ink, also using the bleeding of the (not so waterproof) red fineliner.

Here you see the original drawing, before washing it out.

Jan van Els: Oilpastel

No time for the usual sketches, too much travelling and work. But I have my saturday morning model/portrait master class, we are exercising with oilpastels. This is a painting of model Jan, the husband of Els, one of our group. Oil pastels can be very stubborn.
Ittook me two hours to make

Urban sequence Maastricht (2)

So here is the completed series. It took another hour to paint all 13 of them. Painted at home, the shop is still closed due to the fire.
So the average is about 7 minutes per sketch.

Urban Sequence Maastricht

Here is something that I teach my students to do, but I never did myself. It was long overdue.

As part of my course in sketching for 1st year architecture students I do the following exercise: They have to start in the street and give a very quick impression of what they see, and how the location is felt. Big modern buildings, passing people, views towards the market place.
Then they have to walk to the half open atrium; at the point where they feel they entered that space, they have to sketch what they see again. It's a public, semi closed area, with tall treelike columns, and an intricate glass roof. And shopwindows, bicycles etc
Then they have to proceed to one of the façades: a huge medieval grey stoned solid wall, with square solemn holes with frosted glass as windows. Again: sketch what they see and feel.
The same for the shopwindow next to it.
Finally they have to ketch the stones of the façade. Try to catch the rugged stones.
It's like zooming in from large urban space to urban details.

I tried to do it myself, 13 images, done in less than 30 minutes, including walking, finding the right spot, making pictures. About 2 minutes per image.

The series was made during a lunchbreak in early december. I wanted to come back a few days later to add colour, but...... the shop had a fire, and the atrium was closed for a few months.

Oil pastels

Another oil pastel live portrait session. A difficult material.

 Here also some pictures of the early stages. about 40x60cm, oil pastel.

Hanau library

Still spending a lot of time in Germany these days, for business. So my spare time is limited, and I can't sketch a lot.
This is a rare occasion where I made a short walk before dinner in Hanau (a bit south of Frankfurt). They have a nice new shopping mall, with a brand new library. One of the most beautiful I saw recently. Architect Schrammel (Augsburg).
The childrens part has these little birdnests, where children can sit quietly and read.
I talked with the nice librarian; she told me the library was inspired by the main library in Delft, which (and so the circle comes round again) is next to where I lived for almost five years during my studies (back in the 80s).

Rolduc crypt

The second the two Sketchcrawl drawings that I made a week ago.
This is the crypt of the medieval Abbey church or Rolduc, dating back to the 12th century or so.
It was a hard perspective to do, but I think I managed well. It came out loose, without losing myself in overcorrect perspective games.

Portrait in oil pastel

Portrait made with oil pastels. A tough medium to work with.
Also: three in between stages. Rough sketch (left), then adding tones for blocking in (right), washing out with white spirit (bottom), and finally adding details and colours (the large top paiting).

Rolduc Sketchcrawl

Last saturday we went for another sketchcrawl Limburg. This time in the large abbey complex of Rolduc in Kerkrade. We had a nice group together, som 18 sketchers. Some even came from as far a Heemstede and Culemborg. We were lucky, one of the sketchers arranged access to the beautiful Rococo library, one of the most beautiful in the Netherlands. But very difficult to sketch.
Anyway, here is a picture of the group.

Pam, Jos, xxx, Roger, Ruud, Gaston, Peggy, Rene, Gertie, Wendy, xxx, Patricia and Bert. Missing in the picture are Annette and Roger (my brother).