Vacation Sketches - Part 2.

Some more sketches from my recent trip to Italy. Just like the previous post all of these were done on the same day. After a week at Lake Garda we moved to Lake Como for the second week of our vacation. We took a train to Milano, and from there another train to Como. (We had to go first class since second class was sold out. At Como this posh, old American couple asked us if we were busted for not having first class tickets! (I guess they were surprised by our big backpacks; they must have thought only boring old farts travel first class.)

At Como we took a boat to Menaggio, where we stayed. It was a long trip, almost three hours. I didn't mind, I love Lake Como and I really enjoyed slowly cruising the lake. We found a good, quiet spot by the window so I took out my sketchbook. I was sketching the entire trip. Although the boat was real slow, I still had to draw real fast: the view was constantly changing. These are some of the sketches I did. I quite like the sketch of the man in his rowboat, above. It is actually a very small sketch, only 3 by 2 cm.  

I'll post some more of these sketches soon!

Vacation Sketches - Part 1.

Hey there! Long time no posts. So far this year has been a bit of a struggle. But things are looking up, and I have just returned from a nice vacation in Italy where I did quite a bit of sketching. This is just a first batch of sketches, I'll post some more soon. 

It was funny, I brought three sketchbooks and like a 100 pens, pencils and even waterpaint. I ended up using only the sketchbook with the worst paper and four of my most plain pens. I had fun just sketching away, though. The sketchbook -a normal sized, plain paper moleskine, with a soft cover- fitted perfectly in the side pocket of my shorts together with the pens: so it was easy to take 'em everywhere.

We spend a week at Lake Garda and then another week at Lake Como. These drawings are all from the first week at Lake Garda, I actually believe I did all of them on the same day.

All of these were done with a Copic Multiliner and a Papermate Flair, I threw in some tones with photoshop too.  I'll post more when I get around to scanning the rest of the book. Because the paper is rather thin though, I can't make good scans of all of my sketches. Still there should still be quite a few left that are good enough to post.

 

Rejected

A little storyboard I did for a twitter challenge by Austin Madison. The challenge was to do a four panel stoyboard on "rejection".

I'm actually a couple of days late for the challenge but I'm having a busy week. (busy in a good way) Still I really wanted to draw this nice-guy jock losing out to an evil geek. (That's what you get when you grow up watching John Hughes' films, I guess...)

Done digital with SketchBook Pro and Photoshop.

Merida

I got The Art of Brave as a birthday present, the other day. I'm real anxious to see Pixar's latest, the art in the book is just stunning and it is directed by some of the best story artists out there: Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell and of course the amazing Mark Andrews!

I also think that I might have fallen in love with Merida, I just can't stop drawing her! She's such a fun character, I love her crazy-wild hair.

This is a quick drawing I did earlier today, ink on paper digital colors with Photoshop.

Rocking Concept

Some concept art I did for a music video pitch. At the moment there's not much I can say about it. I do hope this video-concept will get picked up, if it does I'll get do more work like this.

This was done in a bit of a hurry but I sure had fun with it! Ink on Illustration Paper, digital colors.

The Lobster

A quick doodle of Lobster Johnson. Ink on paper, digital colors with Photoshop.

At the Zoo

Yesterday I spend the afternoon at the Amsterdam zoo, Artis. It was a lot of fun, although it was really cold. (We're not having much of a spring so far.) 

If you have been to Artis you might be surprised by the sketch of the tiger. There are no tigers at Artis but in the Aquarium building they have a small museum with mounted animals. At the moment most of it is closed though, because starting next week they will have a new exhibition showcasing the legandary Artis hippo Tanja. She died back in 2009, aged 49. Tanja was extremely popular and starting April 25th she will return to Artis.

I'm looking foward to do some sketches of the hippo; the great thing about the mounted animals is that you can get real close to them. Also they tend to move less than their living counterparts. Which makes for easier drawing. 

If you're wondering why I didn't finish the stripes on the tiger if it was stuffed anyway, it was because I had to leave in order to be on time for a masterclass by storyboard artist Jim Cornish at the Imagine Film Festival. Really cool to see and hear him talk about storyboarding for feature films. (He worked on Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, most of the Harry Potter films and X Men: First Class.) Check out his site for some cool storyboards!    

All sketches are ink (Papermate Flair & Pitt Pen) and marker on grey sketchpaper.

Hylpen

This is a drawing I did as a gift for my parents. This month they celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary! It is a picture of the old city Hindeloopen, one of the eleven cities of the Dutch province Friesland.

This piece was done with brown bistre ink, I am having a lot of fun with this material. I used different washes of ink to create the difference in tone, mixing the ink with water to create lighter tones. To get those sheep I had to carefully tape of the areas where I wanted the sheep, using a scalpel to cut the tape in the desired shape (those sheep in my previous post were setches for this drawing), after inking the background with a brush I removed the tape to fill in the details of the sheep. I used brushes for the main shapes and background tones, and then used dip pens to fill in the details.

This piece is prety big (44 x 19 cm) and the ink has caused the paper to curl a little. Because of this it was hard for me to make good scan. I'll post another pic when I have it framed.