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.

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

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.

Catching up and a new sketchbook!

I didn't update this blog for some days. So here is the catch up entry.

First I started in a new sketchbook. For the first page I felt like making a title page.

(Inspiration came from Liz steel)

The first sketch is the Radisson next tot the Central station in Antwerp. That day was awefull... The weather was soo gray, wet and cold. I did the pencil and inking on location but after that I had to go back to paint it.

 

A few days after that the weather was a bit bette. Still colder but not wet.I painted the greenhouse of the botanical gardens next to the ST. Elisabeth hospital. A small but fun garden.  

Busy week!

WOW! That last week was busy, I did have a little bit of time to sketch but was nowhere near a scanner. So blogging was put on the down low.
So here are my sketches of that week.

 

 This is on a small square. I did mess up the bollards.

 

  This is the house in the Herb garden. (Used to house the gardener)

Made in Gent. One of the oldest buildings in the city. (now a restaurant)

A small bakery in Gent.

Sketchcrawl 2: Train World

On a rainy Saturday the Belgian Urban Sketchers arranged to meet at the Train World Museum in Schaerbeek (near Brussels).  After a nice warm hot coco we got our stuff together, bought our tickets and ventured inside this very new museum. The first hall was mostly models so we skipped it and walked right true to where the trains were. The first thing we noticed was that is was very dark. I didn't think that to be a big problem. (Little did I know!) After passing through a few halls that where as dark we entered a bigger and light hall (thanks to the giant windows). We put up our little chairs and started drawing. I choose a small locomotive. Most others chose to draw 2 very big ones in the centre of the room.

I finished relatively quickly. I did notice over the last weeks that I work pretty quickly. This comes at a cost of less details, less perfect lines and a overall more messy sketch. I don't really mind it but it is something I am aware of. While letting this one dry I walked around the the museum. It was very fun to see all the old railcars. From war to person right up until the transport of the Royal family.Very interesting.

The next sketch was the inside of a railcar used for the transportation of militair personel from an too the battle front in the world wars. This place was a bit darker and there I learned that dark places an sketching don't go well... Yeah, I did ink it but it's a bit of a mess.

 

Watching at it now it's a little bit than I remembered better but I learned my lesson about lighting...

When I got back I found some people trying to buy the Early-bird passes for the USK Symposium in Manchester. Only 1 got here ticket. There where about 250 tickets (I think at least) and they sold out in about 3 minutes!! They still can buy tickets beginning March 5, so not all hope is lost. Just bad luck.

After these two perspective driven and sort off challenging  sketches I looked up an easier subject. 

I decide to draw the backside of a TEE carriage (Trans-european Express)

 

 Half  way true the sketch I got really hungry. I joined a few other sketchers at the restaurant for a quick lunch after which I returned back to my spot for a little bit of paint on that sketch.

The day was coming to an end but I found the time to put in a last sketch. 

The window from the TEE from the outside. 

After that back to the restaurant for some more coco, looking at others people sketchbooks and some good conversation. Not much later the restaurant closed en we all took the train home. A great day and a great event!! Now it's waiting for the next sketchcrawl...

My very first sketch crawl

Today was a great day! It was my very first sketchcrawl with USK Belgium. It was going to be an active and interesting day. I left about 1.30h before the meeting was since I was going by bike and it was 26 km away. But faith had other plans for me. After 3 km the left pedal of my bike decided to that life had been good to it and broke of. Bad luck indeed. After a short ride back home ( Thanks dad!) and some internet research I took the train with my small folding bicycle.
And 2 hours late I arrived at Domein de Renesse. a small but nice castle in an even nicer park. I found the Urban Sketchers scattered over the front law sketching the castle in all it's details. I got introduced to all the lovely people and picked a spot to start sketching. Weather was dry but a bit frisky. Shortly after I started the other sketchers went inside cause they where getting cold. (No problem, I was still hot from the bike ride).
I sketched  the main tower.

But about 25 min later I cooled down and I also moved inside. I joined them to paint my sketch with a hot cup of coco. (the castle has a small cafe inside) I gotta to talk a bit but mostly we where sketching.  It was very fun!

After most of the hot drinks where consumed we got the chance to wander around the halls and rooms of the castle. The biggest room was painted in a nice red. One wall was 1 big mirror existing out of more small square mirrors. These where quite old and created a very interesting parallax effect. I painted a smaller door next to it. (the miror wall felt a bit out of my league.)

Closing time was upon us. We packed our stuff and drove to one of the sketchers home and had a simple but very tasty dinner. The soup was amazing! Some more talking and looking through each other sketchbooks. There are some very talented people at USK Belgium!! And even though my style is much more chaotic I got a lot of positive comments. We had some fun until  21.30h. It was time to go back home and luckily 1 person lived near me and gave me a ride home. The end of a very nice and interesting day.

In the end I was pleasantly suprised. I was received with open arms and I felt like I fitted right in. Soo much talented and lovely people. I can't wait to go to the next crawl!!!