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Light the candles, it's Advent time!

Tree tales

Kristen of www.sleeplessbeekeeper.com was so kind to allow me to use her daughter's photo as a reference.

Meet the tree fairy, who listens to the woes and tales of one of the Old Ones.

It's actually a more elaborate sketch in my sketchbook, 9.5 x 12 cm /3.7 x 4.7 inches

I tweaked the colors just a bit because they were a bit too much on the green side.

I used two brushes, a Pentel water brush and some old round brush that I never use because it does not have a point and loses hair all the time. Surprisingly though, it is able to hold a lot of pigment and water.

41st Worldwide Sketchcrawl in Fribourg

Sketching people on the way to Fribourg until I got caught up talking to one of the passengers.

I think there was less than half an hour left before they packed everything up and were gone.

Boy they were quick about it!

It was so sunny and warm, there was no point in drawing much else than just shadows.

This is my favourite from today.

Sketching faces on the train home.

I am back from the 41st Worldwide Sketchcrawl in Fribourg, Switzerland, and I had a blast!

Not that I sketched an awful lot, but there were so many sketchworthy scenes around every corner that it was impossible to capture it all. Not at my speed of sketching anyways (I really need to get faster).

Fribourg is a city with a population of 36'600. It's medieval center is so well preserved as a whole that it is one of the largest in Europe nowadays. If you imagine every single French medieval house you have ever seen in real life or on TV, and put it in one place, you are in Fribourg. 

And the shop names in the most beautiful lettering! Kiosque, boulangerie, patisserie, auberge, laiterie, crêperie, joaillerie...

I do realize those are just regular shop names but once they look like this, it's a whole different story:

photo by Benediktv

As a non-European, I imagine you'd pinch yourself in the arm every once in a short while to make sure this is real. And I am only talking about a tiny part of Fribourg I got to explore.

Wikipedia tells me there are so many places I have not seen: 

The inside of the Gothic Cathedral of Saint Nicholas and its stained glass windows, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Art and History, the Swiss Museum of Marionnettes, the Swiss Sewing Machine Museum, the Gutenberg Museum and a beer museum.

I'll be back.

There must have been about 30 of us, one of which must have been the youngest Sketchcrawler I have seen so far - I was so happy she joined! 

I would have loved to spend more time with everyone, to know when they started sketching and how they came to join us today, if they did a group outing like this before etc. However, time was tight with so much to see and sketch (not being able to decide what to sketch, that is), the socializing bit was not first priority.

I still had to travel home for more than 2.5 hours, so I left along with André and Kristen to catch the four o'clock train.

Next time I book a hotel room and stay till the very end. Or until I have filled at least 10 pages.

Itsy bitsy sketch

This is the view from my kitchen window, and it's a tiny sketch.
A tiny sketch is better than no sketch!

The weather was so lovely outside and it was all looking just so georgeously autumny.

Oatmeal breakfast

I am on holiday!

That means I've got a looot of time in the morning to sketch my breakfast while waiting for it to cool down 😋 Oh I am enjoying this so much!!!

...and I was sketching in my triad sketchbook, too, with just three colors:

French Ultramarine, Alizarin Crimson, Aureolin Yellow.

BCN USk Symposium sketches

Alright, so here they are. I promised Neta, my USk flatmate for 3 nights, that I'd post them:

Sketches from the 4th International Urban Sketching Symposium in Barcelona, July 2013.

 

Sketches are posted in their chronological order.

I was dealing with a couple of unexpected health issues, not sleeping and food problems made it difficult to be 100% there throughout the day and sketch in that hot climate. 

I did not meet as many people as I would have liked and I did not manage to splash as many sketches onto my sketchbook paper as I had planned, but I gave it my best.

I would not have missed it for the world :-)