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.

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.

A window and some tea and new paint...

I went out today. It was a bit rainy so I sketched a gothic window under a bridge. Not much later I got myself a nice cup of tea. This one was made with much less pencil work than the previous sketches.

I am also looking into new watercolors as some are running out. I'm not sure if I go for Daniel Smith, Blockx (Belgian brand) or Winsor & Newton. The first 2 are (from what I hear) from a high quality but they are more expensive. Something to think about for me...