Below are my last sketches of Barcelona. It’s unfortunate that I am in my ‘doom’ period right now (see previous post), so I don’t feel like writing the story behind each sketch. My ‘doom’ period just got worst today, I think, when I thought it was getting better yesterday. Therefore, I don’t really feel like drawing or do any Blind Contour for tomorrow. I just hope that I will snap out of this not-so-fine time by Wednesday, next week. That way I might be able to enjoy the Thanksgiving dinner at the Hilton on next Thursday night. If not, well it’s just bad luck this year!
A courtyard somewhere along the c/ Montcada, BCN.
The entrance of Museu Picasso, BCN.
Restaurant l’Economic, BCN. 3 course meal (lunch) incl. a caraf of wine for only 8 euros per person. You can’t get it any cheaper than this! The portion is generous, but the quality matches the price.
The square/view across Collegi d’Arquitectes, BCN.
I might apply watercolor on the two pen en ink sketch above. Those two are crying for some colors, I think. I’ll do it when I have more time.
….struck by lightning. That’s the title given by Nor for this particular work of mine. I am currently in a ‘doom’ period, as he calls it. Then my drawings suddenly acquire ‘doom’ characters and feelings too. Well, you obviously can see why he thinks this one as such.
This is my entry for the Everyday Matters Challenge #39: ‘Draw one of the works of another artist’. I didn’t go to any museum for this challenge, because I don’t have the time right now. So I just drew this from a book. Do you recognize this skull drawing? The original is an oil painting from 1886, by an artist who is not my favorite but very popular in the EDM group. From all this artist’s paintings and drawings, I like this one the best. It just makes me keep smiling, since I find it quite humorous. The title of the painting is actually ‘Schedel met Sigaret’ or ‘Skull of a skeleton with burning cigarette’ . Nor changed it to ‘Skull of a skeleton with toothpick struck by lightning’.
The one above looks very Terminator-ish…
Now this one is more Star Wars-ish, agree?
I may add some cross hatching later. I already marked where the shades and shadows should go anyway.
…or “Pure Enjoyment’ it says on the coffee cup. Well, not in the situation I am in at this moment. Pure confusement is more like it. However, drawing this sketch calmed me and the hot chocolate warmed me up on the way home. The sketch shows a coffee cup, but it actually contained hot chocolate. I was afraid if I drank coffee I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. And decaf coffee is no where to be found, except by special coffee bars. People don’t tend to drink decaf here. So just to be on the safe side, I chose hot chocolate.
I think the simple napkin fold can be considered as an entry for the Everyday Matters Challenge #40 ‘Draw something with folds’. It’s simple, but hey, it has folds!
Note: Click to enlarge.
Yesterday was a busy day in Utrecht. Sinterklaas was coming to town. I saw a few kids with black painted faces and dressed as Zwarte Piet (black Pete) walked beside their mom to go the event. Other people were already busy shopping for gifts for 5th December. I was busy shopping too. I needed a new coat, had to go to Bigoli (a wonderful store that sells Italian food products), and needed to shop at Toko Centraal (a store that sells asian produce and other products. These two stores carry ingredients for making Pastitsio and ayam Magadip, that I made this weekend.
In between shopping, I stopped to sketch this building on Oude Gracht, on the corner of Bakkerstraat. It was pretty cold to just stand and sketch. The day was quite grey, but luckily it stayed dry.
Well, I really thought that I would not make it this week. I am pretty busy at the moment, so lately I have to make extra hours at work. But I persevered, not only work has deadlines, BCF does too!. I drew the line drawing blind in the car this morning. We went to work together and Nor drove the car. So I did blind contour drawings of his profile. However, honestly none of the drawings looks anything like him. I think one of them looks more like a cousin of Shrek. Another one looks like something right out of LOTR. I did have fun. Eventhough it does show that I am bad at drawing people, blind or not. BTW, colors were not applied blind.
And it will be Friday in about 5 minutes…
For blind contour drawings of other participants, check out Inkfinger
I can’t believe that it has been a month since my wonderful holiday in Barcelona. And I am still not finished with my holiday story. I have been quite busy lately and haven’t been drawing as much as I’d like. But I think I just have to finish it a.s.ap. before my memory fails me. So here we go…
Day 6 - 07.10.05
This is my sketch of Bar Salvador. We went there to get some breakfast on that Friday morning. It was our last ‘full’ day and we would like to use it to explore the old center. Yes we had been sort of walking around the old center everyday, but we had not really looked. So we started the day by visiting this bar, which we found out from ‘The Rough Guide’. Eventhough it is called a bar, it opens actually only from morning to late afternoon. It is not a place for late night drinking. But not to worry, they do live up to their name. Inside they have enough supplies of alcohol to last for months. It was an amazing experience. However, don’t really expect to be able to get what you want to eat here. There is not really a menu. We noticed that they had only one tiny green board on the wall with a very limited list of (what we suspected) food/sandwiches. Everybody knew what they wanted to order without the help of any menu. Now, we didn’t know what to order; we couldn’t understand the list; we asked but staff do not speak english. I decided to order what I had two days earlier from Cafe Dakmar. I remembered some words, told the waiter, and then it was just wait and see what I was getting. Well, I apperently communicated my order well. I got pretty much the same yummy sandwich.
Between sketching (with pen & ink only, watercolored later), sipping my cappuccino, and eating my sandwich, I did notice the whole space. We were the only obvious foreigners. We were drinking coffee/cappuccino, while the rest were having wine, cava, or even whisky with their breakfast at 10:30 a.m! Just fascinating. My only question was: would they be more productive and creative at work after breakfast with some alcohol?
NOTE: Click on the images for larger views
Everyday Matters Challenge #39
These are our tootbrushes and I did two versions of the same drawing using Graphitint: dry and wet. I bought my set (24 pencils in a tin) months ago, but this was the first time I experimented with these pencils.
Graphitint pencils by Derwent are ‘Coloured Soluble Graphite Pencils’. Honestly, I don’t know what makes them any different than regular watercolor pencils. The only thing really obvious to me is that the pencils come only in ‘neutral’ color. No red, blue, or yellow in the set.
This is how it looks without any water added:
I don’t know if I really like the feel of these pencils. They are some what dry (not waxy), and therefore a bit scratchy. I had some trouble doing some details, but that could probably be resolved by sharpening the pencils a bit. When applied dry, the color difference between some pencils was so subtle that I couldn’t really see if it turned out blue or green. They weren’t as vibrant and as obvious as shown on the color code on the other end of the pencils.
Then I applied a bit of water…
Some colors changed; some became very intense, more vibrant. I was surprise how the originally toned down brown turned into bright orangy brown. I had to blot that part a bit with paper towel, in order to make it less bright. The orignally dark blue green (almost black actually) color became surprisingly olive green. I did add a bit of olive green at first (on the dry version), but because I couldn’t see it I stopped. Now I definitely can see it.
Next time I will experiment with these pencils in combination with white paper instead of colored paper. I am interested too see if the result will be any different.
I am annoyed with Blogger! I tried to upload my blind contour drawing last night, but Blogger wouldn’t let me. I kept getting ‘Unknown Host’ error messages, while I didn’t do any changes on the setting! It is exactly the same this morning, last night and last week. Duh!
So here is my Blind Contour Friday (drawn on Thursday night) for this week.
It is of a ‘Spa Blauw mineral water’ bottle drawn 3 times. The line drawing was done blind (see below), the color was not applied blind (obviously), the splash was done somewhat blind. I did take precaution for the last bit, I did it in our bathroom.
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