Sketching close to History

Last weekend I finally had the chance to sketch with our group again (Urban Sketchers Belgium).

In the south-east of Belgium lays the medium sized Walloon city of Seraing. It was build around the river "De Maas". The acces to the river made it perfect for industry. More specifically (in this case) the steel industry. On the 16th blast furnace no. 6 is to be demolished this friday. We got the chance to sketch it.
I sadly forgot my pen roll so I had to improvise. Luckily I had a bottle of ink and a dip pen in my bag packed already. So all sketches are in ink only.

(The last sketch is of a pumping station we got access to)

Some sketches

Been very busy.
Made some sketches.
The first 3 are from a sketchcrawl we organised in Antwerp. (It was a cooperation between USK BE, NL & Den Haag) About 20-30 people came. It was fun!

 

Inside the garden of the Rubenshuis

 

A flower and an Icecream shop

 

Some houses on the Groenplaats

This last one is from a crawl in Brussel. I was only there at 1 pm. (The others met up aroun 8 Am but I had a late night)

So this is the only sketch I managed. 

View on the centre of brussels from Museumberg

Sketchcrawl in Doel

On 14/8/2016 we were invited by Jeroen Janssen to come along to Doel and sketch during it's village feast and the 'Scheldewijding'.
 It was a very early morning: 7.45 am. On a Saturday!! Not my regular weekend.

Now this isn't just a "normal" village. Almost all houses are empty. Almost all people left. There are just 20 left. A long time ago the city wanted to expand their harbor and Doel was chosen to be burried beneath a few meters of sand. But the villagers started to protest. One by one the house got bought and more and more people left. Untill now. There are still lawsuits going on between the villagers and the city. No one really know what is going to happen.
For most of the year this village is pretty empty. Sometimes some tourists visit. During the night it was a good place for criminals to exchange drugs but the police is trying stop that.

But during this weekend the village was lively again. Streets where filled, bars where open and life music was everywhere. A lot of people were interested in us Urban Sketchers. Great day, great weather, great sketches!! I hope to go again next time!

I do need to draw more though. Only did 4 sketches in a whole day.

Sketchcrawl: Deurne, Sterckshof

Last Saturday we had a Sketchrawl inside the Sterckshof.  This a a castle build for fun. No one ever really lived in it but many women where courted in there.
As of writing this it's for sale, but until it's sold it's rented out to artists as studio spaces. A very good idea in my opinion.
But enough jaki-di-jak here are the sketches.

July sketches

Sooooo july has almost passed. I made 2 sketches, Weather was very unreliable and time just flies by.

But enough excuses, here we go!

This first one is a nice view of the Carolus Boromeus church peeking out above the treetops. Made this one during breakfast while waiting for a haircut.

 

Sketch number 2 was made while I visited KSA Tarcidall (my local youth organisation, where I was leader for 8 years) during their summer camp. I left the people out since it's still difficult for me.

2 sketchcrawls

These sketches have been sittinng on my desktop for way too long. Time to update the blog!

First: I met up with the Urban Sketchers from Den Haag. It was an 2 hour train ride and a short hike until Binnenhof .
" It houses the meeting place of both houses of the States General of the Netherlands, as well as the Ministry of General Affairs and the office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands." (Thank you Wikipedia for that ;) )

It's a very nice building. Some people from the Amino visited too. The first sketch took me about 2 hours! So I had to force myself to make the second one in just 45 min. I think as a pure ink sketch it turned out well.

A few weekends later was our sketchcrawl in Gent.  The first one I co-organised! There were about 25 people from al over the country (4 from Germany). The weather wasn't perfect; we had a few showers. But it I think we can call that a succes.
I did learn that if you do a sketchcrawl in a city, one day is never enough. No matter how early you meet you never have enough time.
Good to remember for the next time.

 

Gérad Michel visited us and brought a copy of the USK at Luik with him. A great book with a lot of sketches by different artists. So I bought it! Great to finally have it!

Work has been chewing up a lot of time. Can't sketch as much as I'd like to.

Medieval Reenactment sketchcrawl

Today was that day! The first sketchcrawl I organised. There is a Medieval Reenactment at a local park in my city. It started a long time as a very small fair but has grown over the year to one of the biggest in europe.
 But enough about the fair let's talk sketching...
 I made a small mistake: I said 10 o'clock in the information but the facebook event said 11.
 3 people turned up 2 of them never having attend any kind of Urban sketching event!
After some small chit-chat we all went our own ways. (We agreed to meetup a few hours later for pictures)
The weather was lovely and sketching went well. I sketched 2 stalls and a small table. I did walk around a while to look how everyone was doing. So only 2 sketches...

At the end we took some pictures and went our seperate ways. 2 of them stayed and sketched even more. I needed to get some bread in the oven...

USK Netherlands first annual Sketchcrawl in Utrecht.

On the 28th of may USK Netherlands organised the first Annual sketchcrawl. We (me and 2 other sketchers) went with a small group of Belgian sketchers to join them. 
There was a workshop on perspective given by Rene Fijten for the people who wanted.  It was a very good workshop and time flew by! Before I knew it was 2 hours further. I was starving so I joined a small group for lunch. And not much later (as said before time flew by!) we had to gather at the endpoint for the group picture.
Add this point I only had made 1 sketch. Luckily me and the other 2 Belgians spent some time after it to go to another location to sketch.
Even though I only had the chance to made 2 sketches that day I had a lovely day.
I did learn that I need to make the most of my time at events.  (Bring my own lunch)

First sketch made for the Perspective workshop.

 

A sketch I made after the group picture.

 

A quick sketch I made during a short break

Quondam and how to turn boring meetings in quality time...

I organised a sketchcrawl at one of the biggest renaissance fair in Belgium. Sadly it was on very short notice and the weather was rather sad so no people came. No problem for me, I can help myself So i went by myself.  I only made 2 sketches since the weather was just not nice. (I heard it cleared up after I got home but to late...

 

This Tuesday I was in a boring meeting where I hadn't too much to do so I spent the time sketching the people around the table. I'm getting better with faces. Now for the bodies...

Holiday and family weekend.

Thursday was a National Holiday and the weather was just soooo nice that I "had" to go out and sketch. After a small bike around the city I went to sketch a small square. (sketched there before)

There where a lot of different music buskers, great atmosphere!

 

This weekend was the yearly big family weekend. I found a little bit of time to  sketch the house where we stayed.

Busy times...

A lot of time has passed and a lot has happend.

1. I started working Part time.
2. Bought a new tube of Ultramarine blue light (Blockx)
3. got a commission for a sky line of antwerp.
4. Went on a Sketchcrawl in Rotterdam.

Here are the sketches from the last few weeks. A lot less then before due to working every afternoon from Monday - Friday.

  Cathedral of Antwerp.

A market stall. 

From the Sketchcrawl in Rotterdam. This is at the old harbor

This is inside the market hall of Rotterdam.

The next sketches are try-outs for the commission.

Getting the white stuff...

I was running out of flour and since I bake a lot of bread I needed some. There is a mill where I  sort of know the miller.
Since the weather was really nice it was the perfect time for a bike ride to the mill for some flour and a sketch.
With 21° Celsius and a clear sky I set of on a 23 km bike ride. One hour and a half later I arrived.
After a a nice sketch, some nice talking and a look inside the mill I got the flour I needed for free (!)
The small bar next to the mill asked if they could get a copy of the sketch to hang on their wall.
The ride back was tiring. (I hadn't had a decent meal that day).
Great day!!

3 sketches, 2 days and new stuff

So a lot happend the last few days. Here we go!

First is a small tunnel in Antwerp. I did sketch this one before but never painted it.

A small cafe behind the Cahthedral. I used a modified Jinhao for this. (more of that later in this post).

The last sketch is just another cafe. I just liked the colors.

I did go shopping yesterday and bought a better folding chair.

Also my Jinhao X750  arrived today. I orderd this to modify it so a G nib fits in to it. I got the idea from a post on Parkablogs
It does have some problems. The ink doesn't flow perfectly. It needs a little bit of priming sometimes and I need to work slower.

Students, pilgrims and old buildings

 Did not a lot of sketching these last few days due to some volunteer work, bad weather and house work. But did got to squeeze in 2 sketching moments.

 

This first one is a election week for the university students organisation. Not a very detailed one but first try at sketching a crowd.

 

Number 2 is the backside of the Pilgrim Hostel. This concept was started for people who hike or bike to santiago de compostella. It's located in a 14th century old building.

 

And finally there is the old building on the Lijwaadmarkt number 9 . Half of it is a cocktail lounge.

That's about it. I am turning 26 this april and my spouses asked what I wanted for my birthday. So I gave them a list of art supplies. They can choose.

Painting to distract myself...

Made 2 sketches yesterday. One of a popup restaurant from a TV sohw, another from the back of the gate of the art university.

But that's not the point. Today Brussels International Airport was under attack. A terrorist attack killed several people and injured many more. A very sad day for Belgium and indeed Humanity.  Painting my sketches helped me relax a bit.

 Love for the world...

Going to disappear

Sketched the old scout buildings again. This time with the sqaure in front of it.
It's fun to flip through my drawings and see how I evolve sketching the same building.
The birdge on the right side was at a 90 degrees angle to the rest of the sketch. Couldn't get them right...