Day trip to Aran

Taking the ferry from Brodick to Adrossan



Then cycling over the island on a road called the string (its called this because it looks like someone has dropped a piece of string on the map) then a loop over the top of the island.



An easy going lunch at the Sandwich Station.



Just round the corner was where I was heading the Isle of Arran Whisky Distillery. I missed the tour but was kindly allowed to see and draw the whisky stills. I chatted to Gordon who worked there and he said that these stills are smaller versions than they usually are, think they're based on the Macallan stills. The smell of drawing in here is quite something, a real aroma of whisky and malt, I wasn't sure if it goes to your head.



On the last part of the ride around Arran after Lochranza there's a long straight part of the road with these high peaks to your right. I stopped for some time to draw them and you could hear cuckoos making their calls.



And lastly the ferry back home, a pack of cyclists(pelaton). You get quite a few teams that cycle round the island as quickly as possible. A good drawing day!

The Sea

Brooklyn is the new place for seafood.

First Time SketchCrawlers

I was very lucky yesterday. I was running a SketchCrawl for a little, local festival, in Sheffield's Botanical Gardens. Despite grim forecasts, it was warm and dry and not even windy: perfect for sitting around on the grass, drawing together.

It was an especially lovely afternoon, as I had all very inexperienced sketchers, people who had done some drawing indoors, but not been brave enough to try sketching out on location. 

I took some tins of coloured pencils and watercolour pencils for people to borrow, which meant that they all had a go with colour, rather than sticking to a regular pencil. I had to work double-quick myself, as the idea was that I would sketch with them, as inspiration, then work my way round the group, chatting to each person and offering any advice that was needed. 

We had a sharing session at the end and everyone produced lovely sketches. I think I may have recruited a few to our regular SketchCrawl North group too. Success all round.

Brad Catron Quartet

On April 17th I went to Tastings (164 Lake Ave Maitland Fl), to listen to jazz and sketch.  The Jazz Tastings Quartet performs every Friday starting at 7PM. I ordered a white wine and a lobster bisque that was delicious. The band got on stage just as I was finishing my bisque. Cary Frank was on the keyboards and you can't see him in my sketch. He is behind the bass player, John Toney.  I recognized John, I had sketched him perform once before at the Obama Campaign Headquarters. Brad Catron was up front with his self deprecating humor and fast fingers on guitar. The fish bowl tip jar was half full of dollar bills from the start.

The music was lively helping motivate every line and splash of color. After my second cup of white wine the sketch started to look not so bad. As often happens, the band took a break before the sketch was done. I kept painting, forgetting about local color, and going with colors that worked for the sketch.

It was a good sketch session, although the bisque and wines were more expensive than I expected. Most people don't recognize the cost of making art.  Maybe I should put a tip jar out every time I sketch. With my luck, I'd be arrested for busking or begging.

- Analog Artist Digital World

4/48 h neukoelln

in reuterstr84, viewing 15 orte - 3 perspektiven and devote myself to other night-out-joys

 

like sitting at corner hobrechtstrasse | sonnenalleen and eat and drink

 

and roam around backyards and end up in pub 'mama', watering hole of young globetrotters and  listen to another version of

'i_want_to_learn_german_as_i_think_it_is_very_unpolite_to_assume_that_everybody_understands_english_(nevertheless,_everybody_does,_does_not_make_it_easier)_and_i_tried_but_it_is_so_complicated_with_der,_die,_das_and_these_verbs_changing_all_the_time'

.

| rolf schröter

a couple more davis bars

Davis CA: when I first came to Davis, there weren't that many bars, for a college town. There were a few, but not as many as now. They are everywhere now. Everywhere is falling over themselves (literally in some cases) to get you the latest hippest craft beer, brewed only by the people with the biggest beards and the oldest bicycles. I must say, I do like the beer out here on the West Coast, of course, and on those very hot Davis days it is nice to kick back with a couple of pints of tasty stuff and draw these bars. Above is Uncle Vito's, not a bar primarily but a pizzeria with a very sports-bar feel. They do good beer in very cold glasses. I have sketched in there before, about four years ago when it was new (it used to be a Chinese take-out place called "Wok'n'Roll"), and I like that big mirror, but now they have that lampshade as well which is always worth a sketch. That evening I had given a rambling talk at my local bookstore, the Avid Reader, about travel sketching, Danny Gregory's book 'An Illustrated Journey' (in which I have contributed a chapter), and Urban Sketchers, and it was great fun - you can read about it on my blog. I came for a couple of beers afterwards to cool down - it had been 109 degrees F that day! That's Davis for you.



This second bar is a brand new one called 'University of Beer'. This place is just about the beer, and they have lots of different micro-brews on tap. This is one for the beer-geek. When it first opened, I thought I was back in Portland, the selection was so good. It was a hot Saturday afternoon, I had been out sketching something or other, some building with some trees probably, and wanted a nice cool interior to balance it. I didn't have space to sketch the wall on the right, which is covered with lots of colourful metal beer signs, but maybe another time. In the 'UoB', their menus are so big they have them on iPads. They also have this cool icy strip at the bar to put drinks on to keep them cold. This is cutting-edge beer-geekery, and I love it.

by Pete Scully

T2 teahouse is closing!

Well, very sad news last week that my beloved local tearoom - The T2 Teahouse at Macquarie Centre is closing down on Friday 21 June. It is hard to put into words how special this place is… and how much a big part it has been of my creative journey over the last 5 years. It has become part of my life...catching up with friends, the start and end of every overseas trip, the place where I have fun and experiment with new techniques, when things were really crazy at work it was the special little event in the week…. and  this year it has been my external office, I go there when I want some time to think.

A little haven for me to sit and sketch and have a lovely time with the amazing amazing staff! In so many ways they have made me feel special - giving me special selections of cups or pots to draw, dashing across the way to get a sample of tea from the retail store because they had run of the tea I wanted, allowing me to sit in the big red chair on my own for an hour or so (or even been there all day!) There are so many different places to sit- all with unique views and characters… and of course the tea and scones and cakes are AMAZING!

I used to just drink tea… this place has made me total tea mad and addicted to tearoom visits!

Thankfully there is one other T2 teahouse still operating for a few more months in a different part of Sydney. T2 is a big brand of teashops all around Australia - but to have one of their special teahouses right near me has been a real treat.




I am collecting 'best wishes' messages from around the world to tell them know how many people know about them globally as I am preparing a 'little card' to give to them all on the last day. Would love you to leave a message here or over at my blog.

There is no doubt that my sketchbooks will be less colourful now….

Carousel at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon, Califonia

Parkway Plaza is a Westfield Shopping Mall in San Diego, California. Right in the middle of the mall there is a Carousel where the San Diego Urban Sketchers met to draw. We were lucky because it stopped at the same place every time it went around. This made it easy to pick one part of the carousel as a subject.

Old Timers

The other day when the weather was still bad I went to paint old timers at a garage specialized in these cars. There were plenty  cars to choose. I did these first two.

By cars I use pencil and watercolors . Sometimes Pen. I do three washes of color. The first one saving the whites of the reflections, a second for the shadows and third to smooth over both.

Ford Mustang: It was parked outside the garage. I am very proud of the reflections on the store window. You can see the building on the other site of the street.
Chevrolet Corvette: The car was on the hydraulic ramp.

A few days later there was also a big car show on the Ku'damm (an important street in Berlin West)
A Mercedes Benz190 SL
An here is my favorite car, probably because I had not seen one before. A Borgward Isabella Coupe.

Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones came to Boston. It was a sold out show and the only tickets that were available were really expensive so I had given up on going to the show.

The day before the show, I received an email from the Rolling Stones website saying they had a number of regular priced tickets available only to fans attending the show so I immediately jumped on it and bought 2 tickets to go with my wife.

Picking up the tickets was strict having to show proof of ID, the credit card used to purchase the ticket and also was given a tag to wrap around the wrist showing we bought the tickets. Seats were selected at random and we ended up on the 3rd floor all the way in the back - pretty much the worst seat in the house. Either way we were still excited that we were able to get in. We had time before the show started so I started sketching with the intention of doing a really detailed sketch.

While I was sketching my wife noticed a staff member walking over to many people seated in our area, checking to see if they had the wrist band on and then handing them tickets. They were given tickets to better seats. 10 minutes into the sketch the man came over to us saying it was his last 2 tickets and told us we could move to row 6 from the stage!! Unbelievable!!

 


I couldn't get a sketch since I was too excited from all this but here's an iPhone picture taken from our seat - it shows how close we were in comparison to the 1st seat shown in the sketch.

What a great show. And they have been together for 50 years which is amazing too.
To wrap it up, here are 2 T shirts bought at the event.

Rural sketching in France

 

I spent a nice week sketching and painting in Burgundy, France. It was a rural region with small villages, old castles, winding roads, good company, good food and good wine. The last three are the most important for any Frenchman of course.

I did a painting course there, on the premises and surrounding villages of Château de Messey, our lodging. The drawings of the cows were made sitting at the breakfast table, which was located on the inner courtyard.

The drawing of the village is an overlook at "La chapelle sous Brancion". As the name of the village implies, it is located below the castle of Brancion, and you have a terrific overview over the village and the valley beyond.

Horn Session

 

Each Spring, my son Henry has his trumpet recital, and I bring along a sketchbook and challenge myself to do the impossible (for me): work quickly! In the time that each horn student plays their little piece of music, I try desperately to capture the characters. These drawings are from two different years, so some students appear twice (including my son). Perhaps this makes for a good game: find the pairs.

Down to Wapping

I received an email from a young designer who had found my drawings on Flickr and was enquiring about the possibility of using some of them in the redesign of  a menu for a London pub. Now as it happens, this pub is one of my favourite London pubs, so I was immediately hooked. The pub is The Town of Ramsgate, situated down in Wapping. When I was a boy this was a dodgy area that suburban folk like me would rarely visit. Back then it was warehouses, docks and ill-lit streets, with stone setts, and no easy transport links. Now it's very upmarket apartments in converted warehouses and there's a refurbished station for the newly refurbished London Overground.
The Town of Ramsgate dates back to at least the mid-sixteenth century. It is a riverside pub, right next to the Old Wapping Steps, an ancient access to the river itself, and the foreshore. It's an area of interesting history. These steps were the site of execution for those found guilty of piracy, whose bodies were hung on the gibbet until they had been covered by three tides. Captain Kidd is reputed to have been one of these unfortunates. The pub itself was the place where the London mob found and caught the notorious 'Hanging' Judge Jefferies who was trying to arrange a boat to flee his own trial.
If you're visiting London, I'd recommend a visit, just a little walk east of Tower Bridge.
I met the designer at the pub, and had time for a quick drawing from the steps across the river to Rotherhithe:

Rotherhithe from the top of Wapping Old Steps

The encounter has made me look back at the drawings I did around Wapping a few years ago, that may now be used in the new pub menu design. Here are some:

Wapping High Street - Gun Wharves. These old warehouses are now apartments backing on to the river

Wapping church

The passage from the High Street, down the side of the Town of Ramsgate, to Wapping Old Steps and the River

Wapping Old Steps

Mediterranean Holiday next days

Continued from http://www.urbansketchers.org/2013/06/mediterranean-holiday-continuation_7.html
and http://www.urbansketchers.org/2013/05/tel-aviv-by-morning.html

Despite the very tough schedule we succeded to walk around a bit. For instance we spent a day in Old Jaffo so I was able to sketch some Jaffo streets I was never done before and actually dreaming of it. Now it's finally happend.

Those ancient yellow stone walls that looks like loafs of white bread becouse of constant salt wind influence from the Mediterranean Sea always inspired me. As well as plenty of magical mistery looking artisan goods you can get on a way.

And I was glad I was able to catch a glimps of local food we enjoied before. The good thing that all our all time favorite places still on, alive and kicking. We wasn't able to make a tour at the new ones - mission impossible even for two weeks there. And there are real good!

I was also very much satysfied of my complimentary Stillman and Birn Skethcbook. It's large format and thick ivory paper was just fine for that sort of travel and especially for the kind of sketching-meet scrapbooking I usually do. Thank you guys!

Dominican Republic

Had a wonderful trip to the DR recently, such a beautiful place, I didn't do as much drawing as I intended but then, it was a vacation.