A weekend in Milan

Last weekend I was on a short trip to Bergamo and Milan in Italy. The Dome/Cathedral in Milan was more than impressive with its white marble exterior and the hundreds of sculptures, yet overall I I liked Bergamo better. This was mainly due to the fact that the old part of the city on the mountain with its small alleys and old buildings had a very intimate atmosphere.


Nevertheless, here are some of the sketches I did when I could spare some time besides taking hundreds of photos.

A church in Bergamo

Part of the entrance side of the Milan Dome

Just a little family resting on the place in front of the Dome

With a grain of salt

Inspired by a book I read as a child (couldn't remember the name but I found it out in the meantime. It's called 'The BFG' or with its German Sophiechen und der Riese written by the Brittish author Roald Dahl. Should find the book and read it again. I remember really liking it.

"That gigantic salt really hurts..."

Civil Servant

Sometimes we all have a certain cliché in our heads when we think of some things. Here's one of a civil servant I just had to draw. A little different approach here. Try to go a little "Street Style" without getting to much into it. Originally painted with fineliner, later vectorized in Illustrator. Added the paper texture afterwards.

After a hard 3 hour day at work...

Cyborg man 1

Originally this was painted on A3, unfortunately my scanner is only A4, so it is more of a close-up than the original. Next time I should just take a photo.

I originally started with the front, but it turned out too look more like a back, so I went for that.  Funny how red almost always looks like blood...

And he was waiting...

I'M BACK: Orpheus in the Underworld

So after way too long I'm finally back with new pictures. Hopefully I can keep the blog updated more frequently again.

Here's a short impression from the Rheingau Musik Festival, Michael Quast playing "Orpheus in der Unterwelt" all alone (only supported by his piano player). Very funny and entertaining, but a lot of spitting. If you have the chance to see it, go!

Michael Quast (right) 

Ready, steady...

A crocodile, an evil penguin and an otter: 3 great swimmers, all very different. Who would win a race in water?

High Moon

Showdown on a small Planet. Who can fire the deadly shot? Too. Much. Tension.

Veggies of Wrath

Inspired by John Steinbeck's Nobel Price winning book "Grape's of Wrath" and a comment of my art teacher gave me the idea for this pic. My fave is the mad potatoe. No further comment needed.

You gotta lick it...

Is it a tongue or ist it a worm? You decide.  Ink drawing with very basic photoshop coloring. Done in about 50 Minutes.

Snail Fail

Last drawing for today. I did this actually also during the sketchgroup meeting, but finished it up during my train ride back home. It's some kind of a snail man thingy. He might be a friend of the insane turtle man. I'm afraid to ask.

They nest

Productive day, today. Somehow I like drawing bird-like creatures. Why not making them gigantic in size? And if they were that huge, what would they build their nest with? Well in this case they use fir trees. Why do the knees have eyes? I have no clue. Done with a black ballpoint pen.

Stiftundcafé

Three Weeks ago I started a sketchgroup. We meet once a week at a local café, talk and sketch people or what we want. It's a lot of fun to talk about our passion drawing while actually drawing. Here are two pieces I did the last time and today. (I corrected the date after scanning :))

This flower is mine ... MINE.

Another Challenge, but I missed the deadline by 10 seconds. Pity, but no reason for whining. This weird turtle guy took about 60 Minutes with coloring. (Actually it is a tortoise man, because turtles live in water :))

Fancy fencing

Always trying something new. This time, initiated by a course at the university, I played around with classical inking technique (with a crow quill). No prepatory drawing, just directly on the paper. Scanning, some coloring in Photoshop, et voilá. I was going for a desaturated look, go give it an older feel.

Beyond the mist, there it lied: The city on the water

Somehow contest are really cool to get me do stuff (and not get lost too much in details). I drew this city with pencil, scanned it and then did the rest in Photoshop. Had to start two times because I actually got lost in details the first time, when I painted it in color and I'd have never finished it in time. So I restarted with a black/white version and colored it afterwards. Much better. Here are the three steps for you to see:

Jo mei, eim bäck from Mjunik

Time for some new stuff. I just came back from Munich. Real nice city with a lot of culture and great sights. here are two of the sketches I did. Number one is the view from our hotel room, number two was done during a sightseeing bus drive with a very very bad audio guide speaker.

Creepy? Cute? I gonna eats ya!

A quick 20 minute drawing, done with pencil, watercolor and a black color pencil. Don't try to caress that little fella!

House of Blues – Jam Session

Yesterday I went again to the local blues bar "House of Blues" checking out what the weekly jam session was all about. It turned out quite nice. People can bring their instruments an play some Blues together. Good atmosphere for sketching, although they smoked a lot there. But I guess that just adds to the mood. 

Dancing with the Devil

This one was just for fun. Once again no real idea, just started drawing with a black ballpoint pen. The color is done with watercolor. Time was about 2 hours.

Sitting, Waiting.

As promised, something new. This was another contest (yeah those get me doing stuff :)) 2000 year old creature. Time 1 hour, although this version has been painted further for about 45 minutes. I had no real vision, it just came out of doodling around. later I wanted it to have some stony skin an grass on the back to show, that it sat there already for a long time, waiting for whatever. I like the bird.

Not yet a butterfly, Alice

So, finally something new. Was very busy, but there'll be some new stuff in the next days.
This is another Chiustream Contest. Not my fault they wanted a caterpillar from Alice in wonderland, again. (well previously the choice was ours, this time it had to be the caterpillar.) 
But they gave us more time, nevertheless this is what I came up in a little more than two hours. I'm far from satisfied, but it turned out quite good for the time I invested. For me a real speed painting!

There's no money in Jazz

After way too long I finally got out to do some sketching. I went too see my friend's Jazzcombo the "Jan Jansohn Quartett" at House of Blues. Awesome playing of some original material and many classics of famous jazz players. Nice atmosphere to get lost in the sketch:

Waiting for Botticelli

For all who don't know: There is pretty rare exhibition of Botticelli paintings and graphics in Frankfurt am Main in the Städel Museum. They gathered a lot of his stuff from different museums and privat collectors from all around the world. If you like Botticelli's art you should go there. (Check out the rest of the museum as well. They have some nice paintings there with a wide range from gerhard Richter to Picasso and Rembrandt.) But be warned, you might have to wait between 30 to 60 minutes due to a lot of people wanting to see it. (Btw, the famous 'Birth of Venus' cannot be seen there: It is still at the Uffizi gallery in Italy. )


So I made this little sad sketch while standing in the line and waiting for entry. I should mention that it was very cold on that day and I can't remember my fingers hurting that much ever. This and standing while drawing didn't make it easy to come up with straight line. :)

The devil's in the detail

Three is a charm as they say. So here's the third steam locomotive. I am not sure if it is the last one, but for now it is. By the way, this one was a tricky one, because of all the pipes, rivets, the whole grade of detail in general. This time I even remembered to scan the pencil sketch beforehand so you see all three (there it is again:)) stages of the painting.

I'm on the night train

As I mentioned in my first post I'm painting several steam locomotives (for a project in the university). Here's the 2nd one. First traditionally painted with a sepia tone water color, then scanned and abused in photoshop. The speed lines are done with a crow quill and indian ink. Btw, all the pictures are still work in progress.

Once again updated: The first steam locomotive.

Smoking Caterpillar

Today I joined Bobby Chiu's little challenge on sketchoholics.com. We were supposed to paint anything related to Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice in Wonderland". I figured most people would choose Alice herself or the always present Cheshire Cat, so I went for the smoking Caterpillar. As I was already on my next steam engine painting I used water colors, which were already ready. Unfortunately I did not win, but that's fine, because I had a blast in those round about 50 minutes we had to finish the painting. 


What you see here is of course the finished version (about 2 hours) and not the one I uploaded to participate.

Space Turtle 'Plug' and the fat Lady

That's what happens when you start drawing without a certain picture in mind.

The train moves on

Interesting how the same picture looks totally different with a few strokes of Ink and a little photoshop tweaking.

Master & Slave

A friend of mine wanted to draw a line for me to start a picture, another one made a 2nd line. If you want to know how it turned out, well just look at the picture.

From the mists of the past

Another little scene I drew yesterday. Tried to only work with shadows, negative space and not so many outlines. And to try even something else I went for a little coloring.

Winterchurch

I really like churches. They always have something mystical about them and even more when it's snowing. (I like snow, too :))

Here's a sketch I did today, while waiting for someone "very important" to arrive.

Here starts the train

This steam locomotive is the first of a series I will do over the next weeks.

I never really used water colors in this way, but I must confess I'm quite happy about the result and really liked doing it. Steam all the way!