Memory of Amsterdam - Three Bikes

Three bikes are located in an area of Amsterdam I had a workshop at, during last years symposium in Amsterdam. I am in memory mood at the moment as it is now about a year ago when we had very good and hot times in Amsterdam with so many sketchers from all around the world. 

The three bikes in the shade of a big tree represent my three best sketcher friends from far away countries, which I cannot see at the moment. Hope we will all be sketching together again soon. Stay save.

Die drei Fahrräder stehen in einem Stadtteil von Amsterdam in dem ich einen Workshop während des lastjährigen Symposiums in Amsterdam hatte. Etwas wehmütig denke ich an die gute Zeit vor etwa einem Jahr zurück, in der wir uns im sehr sonnigen und heißen Amsterdam mit Urban Sketchern aus aller Welt trafen.

Die drei Fahrräder stehen symbolisch für meine drei besten Sketcher Freunde, die in anderen Ländern/Kontinenten wohnen und die ich nicht treffen kann. Hoffentlich können wir bald wieder zusammen sketchen. Bleibt gesund. 

Test QOR watercolours: Crailsheim - Brunnen

 

Let's get ahead with the very special gifts from the Amsterdam Goodie Bag. 

I did a 3 colour watercolour drawing of the three tubes generously given to us by QOR watercolours. I already did a test with the last years dot card (have a look at my posts after the Symposium 2018 in Porto).

I used the plain colours in some areas and intermixed them in others. I thought that a garden view would be a good thing to test the whole mixing variety. 

The colours are: 

    Ultramarine
    Nickel Azo Yellow
    Quin. Magenta

They are all VERY bright and I am pleased with the violets, oranges and the possible greens that could be mixed out of those three. In my opinion it is always the greens you have to look for if you use just a three colour palette. Here we can create super blueish greens as well as bright ones who do not look artificial...if you do not want to carry a lot of stuff, those three are highly recommended. 

(Note: This is no publicity - just personal test and I do not get money for recommendations)

Jetzt möchte ich mal wieder ein paar Dinge aus der Amsterdam Goodie Bag testen und heute ist mein Blick auf die drei Tuben der Firma QOR watercolours gefallen. Ich dachte mir, dass ein Gartenbild vielleicht eine gute Wahl wäre, um die verschiedenen Farbmischungen aus den drei Primärfarben auszuprobieren. Übrigen habe ich im letzten Jahr bereits eine Dot-Card von QOR getestet- wen es interessiert, einfach nachlesen. Das war nach dem Porto Symposium in 2018).

In manchen Bereichen des Bildes habe ich die reinen Farben verwendet, in anderen Bereichen habe ich sie in unterschiedlichsten Mischungen verwendet. 

Die Farben sind folgende:

    Ultramarine
    Nickel Azo Yellow
    Quin. Magenta 

Die Farben sind sehr leuchtend und ich finde die Violetttöne, die Orangetöne und sogar die Grüntöne kommen gut raus. Meiner Meinung nach sollte man immer die Grüntöne testen, wenn man mit nur drei Farben malt. Hier kann man schöne bläuliche Grüntöne erhalten und auch sehr kräftige Gelbgrüns, die nicht künstlich wirken...also wenn ihr mal nur mit wenig Material malen möchtet, kann ich diese drei Farbtöne getrost empfehlen. 

(Es handelt sich hierbei nicht um Werbung, sondern um meine persönlichen Eindrücke und Tests. Ich erhalte kein Geld für Empfehlungen)

Memory of Amsterdam - Sketchbook Spread

I will show you another sketchbook spread I did not show so far. In Amsterdam I just did the pencil drawing and a part of the watercolouring. Now I finished the rest. Here is the whole 2x A4 spread. To the left is Sluyswacht area where we had a few drinks in the evenings and to the right the ticket office I saw close to the station. The neat blue houses below are from a KLM snack pack.

While I write this I am just back from the annual Urban Sketchers Germany Meeting which was held this year in Augsburg. I still have to get through my drawings and photos to let you have an insight of these crazy four days I spent with my friends and will report on the workshops and events I experienced there.

Jetzt zeige ich euch noch eine meiner A4 Doppelseiten aus meinem Amsterdam Skizzenbuch, die ich noch nicht ganz fertig hatte. Die Zeichnungen hatte ich nur z.T. koloriert und nicht mehr geschafft, da die Zeit dort zu knapp war. Auf der linken Seite sieht man die Boote um das Sluyswacht Häuschen, in dem wir einige Abende verbracht hatten und auf der rechten Seite ist ein Tickethäuschen, das ich in der Bahnhofsgegend gesehen habe. Die kleinen blauen Häuschen stammen von meinem KLM snack pack.
 
Während ich diese Zeilen schreibe, bin ich gerade wieder zurück vom jährlichen Treffen der deutschen Urban Sketchers. Das Treffen fand in diesem Jahr in der schönen Stadt Augsburg statt. Ich muss meine Skizzen und Fotos erst noch durchgehen und werde dann über die vier verrückten Tage dort berichten, die ich mit Freunden verbracht habe und natürlich über die Workshops und Events, die dort stattgefunden haben.

Back to normal life

The watercolour you see shows a small part of my garden. I am happy that I can enjoy my garden again as...

I am back from my 5 day trip to Amsterdam. Seems like very much longer. I am full and need some time to understand what I learned. It was good to try new styles of watercolour painting during the last few days in Amsterdam, but in my todays garden watercolour I am back to the colourful style I usually do to relax. 

Normal life has me back and that is everything else but easy after a few days within the extremely creative crowd and like-minded artists at the Urban Sketchers Symposium Amsterdam 2019.

My head is full of memories and new ideas and I am full in a good way, but tired at the same time. We did not get enough sleep - nearly none and wanted to enjoy every minute of togetherness. 

It was wonderful to meet artists from Asia, Australia, Belgium, Holland, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, the US, England, Slovenia, Switzerland, Egypt, Lebanon, Austria, France, Portugal and and and....Bringing all these people together is a extremely good thing. People you would normally just know from the Internet become friends. 

We drew and painted and had art talks with no interruptions but a bit of sleep and eat. The hardest part was to say goodbye to friends after the end-ceremony.

Next year the Symposium will be held in:  HONGKONG

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Way home

The above butterfly stands for the quiet and the beautifully coloured natural place I live in and is kind of a synonym for the flight back I did that very day. You see I am happy to go back home from the big city of Amsterdam to my more quiet small town place at home. Good to see the world, but good to be back as well.

On a sleepy early morning I leave my hotel at 4 in the morning and board a KLM flight back home from Amsterdam to Germany. It feels like I miss my artist friends already and I am kind of torn apart from one world to the other.

In the same time I am happy about what awaits me at home as well and to see my dearest again.

New adventures are already in my head and my next travels are in a planning stage so after the trip is before another!

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Closing Reception

Closing Reception at Muziekgebouw on Saturday

After the final photo with crowds of Urban Sketchers and one with the German Gang (see photo) we made a very long walk to find the end location. We entered the Closing Reception hosted at the Muziekgebouw, surrounded by a fantastic sunset view of Amsterdam. 

The Symposium Closing Reception celebrated the end of one Symposium and welcomed the next, with the announcement of USk Symposium 2020's host city.

Also included in the evening's program was the Silent Auction, where everyone could bid for a chance to bring an original piece of artwork home, and the Raffles Draw, where anyone could try their luck to bring home fabulous art materials, generously sponsored by event partners. For those with small luggage it was difficult to take more stuff home...

Of course, not forgetting, a wonderful evening of camaraderie amongst the Urban Sketchers family and their friends. Me and my close friends with workshop passes did not stay very long. We just wanted to say good bye to our sketching friends, take a few last photos together and have some final talks. 

We preferred to see our close friends (without a pass) before we all had to fly back to our home countries.

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - watercolour portrait sketch - P.

During the Symposium I did two pencil drawings of my friend P. (one frontal and one from the side) but never had the time to throw colour onto them. Now that I did it, I have to confess that it does not look very much alike. The positive thing is - like that I have to try and retry again which is very much fun to me...

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Workshop LK Bing

Thank you LK for the great workshop. We went to our location with the help of our nice dutch volunteer Yvette. LK told us about his colours and his mixing methods and gave us tips on tools and materials.

After a short demo he first made us do a thumbnail sketch of the area in front of us with the church, the buildings, the tram and the people. He offered us some watersoluble ink pens for that one. The ink and the watercolours gave a lot of texture to the paper and created a wonderful pattern.
Above you can see my own thumbnail sketch made with watersoluble ink pen and I used only prussian blue to darken and connect. The ink pen made a lot of violet patterns when touched by watercolour.

Then he made a demo on larger watercolour paper and after that it was our turn. He toned the paper beforehand with colour in order to get closer to some classical mood. 

We had about 40 min. for the larger watercolour - here to the left is mine - and hurried to get it done.

Difficult conditions for this one as while we were drawing a guy from Amsterdam Street cleaning surrounded us several times with his kind of very loud vacuum cleaner. He was very curious about what we did. I feared that he could suck in our colour tubes from the ground...but they somehow survived... 

After one-to-one talks and tips from the master about our finished pieces and the group photo, we went back to the venue at Zuiderkerk to meet our friends. What a great workshop and beautifully done printed handout, explaining his technique. 

My thanks go to LK, a true master of watercolours.

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Reflections on the Ground

I was very much interested in the reflections on the ground and the lighting situation of the building with that watercolour.

Bei diesem Aquarell interessierten mich die Reflektionen auf dem Boden und die Beleuchtung des Gebäudes.

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - The Colours of Amsterdam

The colours of Amsterdam in my opinion are very dark compared to the more southern countries.

I would say a lot of grey, brown, brick red and black in the houses...lots of green plants in the streets and greyish and dark dulled brick-red colours on the ground.

Translated into watercolours I would see the following colours:

- brick red / 
  rosé /potters pink
- burnt umber 
- ultramarine
- indigo
- cerulean
- naples yellow 
  or a light grey
- dark grey 
  or neutral tint
- different greens 
  for the plants

 


This is a completely different colour range compared to at home...

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Workshop Demo Reham M. Ali

Demo of Reham Ali

Her workshop is called:
Fearless Watercolours 


And that says it all. She is a professor for arts and a great teacher. Her joy is contagious and her drawing and painting skills outstanding. She shared her passion with us and this was one of the best teaching moments of the Symposium to me.
 
To the left you can see her sketch and below her watercolour painting of the Zuiderkerk entrance.
 
Thank you Reham for sharing this experience.

USk Symposium Amsterdam - Sketchwalk - Amsterdam Boats

In the end of Sketchwalk 5 we came to some kind of park and could see the boats to the other side of the quay. I just had time to do the following sketch into my large moleskine:

The colours came later as my companions wanted to go further...

You see what a difference the colour does to a simple drawing. This always amazes me.

USk Symposium Amsterdam - Workshop Jane Blundell

Workshop Jane Blundell: Setting the Tone, Creating the Texture

Jane explained her colours to us and gave us the missing colours we did not have in our own palette out of her tubes. We first did some simple squares filled with the colours of her watercolour palette. She described them to us, informed us how to create texture and patterns and then let us draw the house opposite which might be one of the oldest warehouses in Amsterdam. The house was a good motif, but the small space we had and the busy spot with a parking car blocking the view of most of the sketchers seemed a bit strange.

In the beginning we used the plain colours one after another. In the very end she informed us more about the interesting stuff of colour mixing - and "schwupps" the workshop was over.... This part could have taken a bit more in the time schedule as I am quite interested in that...time was so tight...

I was satisfied with my drawing of plain colours - not too much mixing required at that stage (...done in quite a different style than I am usually painting - but that is great for learning new approaches to the medium). We all thank Jane Blundell for her teaching, her help and for sharing our group foto of that day.

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Drawing no. 4 of 5

You might already know this sight, but this is my drawing number 4 of 5 (Workshop drawing). During the workshop I did not watercolour it. Later I did. This one is done a bit differently as I used a cretacolor pencil in the black parts of the initial drawing before watercolouring. If you look at it closer you can see the super spreading / washed-out and granulating effects mainly in the light blue parts which are only possible in watercolour technique (btw...it was a Sennelier light blue).

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Sketching with friends

We made our way through the streets of Amsterdam. We found the right spot in front of another beautiful bridge  and a few boats on the canal and sat down on kind of a trottoir and enjoyed the morning sun.

I forgot to take a photo of the area and we were already walking to the other side of the bridge as my friend reminded me to take an on-the-spot-photo...

(on this photo there is not yet a real big sign of the bridge as I did not have enough time to finish...back at the hotel I drew the rest of the bridge mainly with the blue cretacolor watercolour pencil I got out of the gift-box.)



I will talk about my next workshop in Amsterdam shortly so stay tuned...

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Amsterdam Sketchwalks

We decided to do sketchwalk 5, which was close to the greenhouse of Amsterdam (to the right of my watercolour sketch) in the area of the Botanical Garden. Our Belgian friend Deb joined us and we had a good time fighting against ants and flies in the heat of the afternoon. In my painting the most interesting part for me were the red and white barriers upon the bridge in front. The strange glasshouse building of the botanical garden is only indicated by lightly coloured areas to the right of my painting. After a short hour we stopped as it was extremely hot. We needed a drink...

If you are interested in the locations of the different sketchwalks you can get the details on www.urbansketchers.org

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Workshop Uma Kelkar

Workshop Uma Kelkar

Rhythm is A Dancer: Learning to employ repeating motifs to bring in various moods in your sketches. 

 

She already welcomed us with music and the whole teaching was like music to me.  What a clever workshop and clear teaching method of Uma Kelkar. I loved the energy, the power and her clever advices and enjoyed every minute. 

My drawings here are not in the right order, but I put my most liked up as no. 1 (which was my kind of limited colour edition)


 




















Her advice of "speaking your drawing" first  before doing anything else was executed by us in another different drawing. The drawing she is holding in her hands is mine. She did explain everybodys paintings in a detailed manner and gave us tips and good advice. Before we began our paintings she gave us two words each (I arranged to the left of my sketchbook the words I became) and according to these I had to try my direct watercolour painting (see sketchbook in Umas hands).

I was quite happy as I was feeling more comfortable than I first expected I would (...you know it is a bit like exam situation...). In my opinion it was a successful day to everybody in the workshop as WE LEARNED A LOT (...and this is what we came for!). Thank you so much Uma.

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - The Goodie Bag

The Symposium is not only drawing and learning it is also a lot about the materials we use. Art material talks everywhere. People compare and have a look on the new stuff their companions are using or the "candys" the art material manufacturers bring to the Symposium. 

Thank you Sponsors - what would be a Symposium without a Goodie Bag to try new materials and have those precious art material talks, the exchange of ideas and the possibility to buy art materials directly on site.

We test the material made by the manufacturers and as bloggers spread the word of what we think about it. This in my opinion is a good thing for everybody (for us is the fun trial part and for the manufacturers to spread their ideas and to get some feedback).

For example I tested all different kind of watercolours we got last year and made some blogposts about them. I will do the same thing and try all the colours inside the bag, but it will take some time to get everything set. 

Also I fell in love with a new to me sketchbook last year and ordered quite a number later for some of my drawing friends and me...you see the word is spread...;o)

Although I work much more with watercolour, this time again I was expecially happy about the nice box of Cretacolors I spotted first while unpacking. There has been a different one in last years' bag and I finished them very fast and had to order some more later. 

The Carandache material is totally new to me and I will try the pencils soon, as I had a good talk with Adrian from Carandache.  Lots of new creative adventures await me, I gotta go ...

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Helio Botos Folding Sketchbooks

It is hot these days in Amsterdam and we urgently needed something to drink. There is this new stuff: Cold Coffee with ice cubes - which tastes better than expected and refreshs the body. While drinking,  I did a sketch of famous Helio Boto who btw brought me two of his extremely precious hand made special folding sketchbooks. He made them by himself expressly for me with Arches paper for suiting my kind of drawings. So beautiful! 

I don't know if he already got a name for this kind of difficult folding structure.

He used a very nice fabric for the outside and an indication on every page with arrows for the drawing direction as you can close the book at normal sketchbook opening size if you sit and draw somewhere - so you won't need more space than a normal sketcher does with a usual sketchbook. This is pure luxury. You just need to know in which direction to draw to later get the complete picture view. 

Such a clever idea and complicated thing to prepare. I think I will have to carefully think over to maybe draw just the sites of one city or a main theme onto them in order to have a complete picture of a certain place. 

These Sketchbooks are extremely precious to me so I will still need my time to think about what to draw onto them. 

Many thanks to you my friend Helio and his wife for your precious gifts. 

My dear readers, please have a look at his site (link) and you will recognize his paper folding style and his great drawings (he usually uses different paper than me).

...more of Amsterdam tomorrow...

USk Symposium Amsterdam 2019 - Lunchtime + Some of my most precious sketchbooks and sketchbag

This sketch was done while having lunch at Cafe Morlang with my closest sketching friends before the official opening of the Symposium. 

We sat outside directly by the canal and close to a bridge. I sat at the table facing the cafe so I sketched the opposite view. As you can see the houses are often beautifully decorated with flowers....ahhh flowers...my new sketching bag...

I would not like to forget posting my new beautiful (flowery) sketching bag I got from my friend P. and also the exquisite hand craftet sketchbooks she brought along from her far away country. These are so beautiful and precious gifts I extremely love. 


I feel deeply honoured. Thank you so much.

More about another very special sketchbook type    tomorrow...