A very interesting evening with a new model. And this evening I arrived with the idea to do some watercolouring. 
As I am not very experienced with watercolours, I need to do more and more and make mistakes for the first year or so.
So here goes, after a phase of warming up with charcoal on newsprint, 
one watercolour was achieved during a 3 x 5 minutes spree and a 5 minute break.
Slowly 
getting back into the drill of sketching in public places.
I actually feel pretty comfortable doing this in cafes now. Just using a cheap drawing tool here (roller-ball pen) on childrens’ drawing paper (DIN A4, 100 sheets cost 2€). Makes a light weight set to carry around.
The few attempts I made at practicing faces again while on holiday … need to do this more often and more deliberately … fight that sloth in me! The practice helps obviously, but not practicing helps all the hard earned skills fade away.
Just back from a 10 day holiday in good old Lithuania.
Visiting relatives, taking in the sites and even a short trip to the Baltic seaside.
Here are the few sketches I managed to get done while there.
(CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGES)
1: from out of a Lithuanian Kepyklele (a bakery)
2: in a small restaurant in the “Republic of Uzupis”
3: an exhibition case in Medininkai
4: view from our hotel room in Vilnius
5: at the Beer Library (Alaus Biblioteka)
6: from the veranda of our hotel in Palanga
So, coming back to gesture drawing (practicing) after so long, it is really hard to be pleased with the results.
It always seems like I’m failing.
I’ve been looking at the gesture drawings of some fellow artists in the forum of pixelovely.com. I have read often enough — and I actually believe in it myself — comparing your own drawings to others’ can lead to a dead end very easily, it can make you withdraw inside and strengthen your own doubts about your skills, basically it isn’t much help at all and will only keep you back. Still, I catch myself doing it. So here I am “saying” it out loud and clear: You are you, and you should listen to your own thoughts, emotions, ideas. Make some new rules. Perhaps try out a few things the others are doing, but DO NOT COMPARE YOUR DRAWINGS TO OTHERS! (… you don’t know what background the others have, how long they have been doing this, where they went to school, who their mommies and daddies are, how long they have each day to work on this stuff, what they eat for breakfast, whether they have family or even friends (I’m not saying you can’t have a great family and many great friends, if your a good artist, just sometimes they can be a distraction, but also a good source of input and perhaps one of the days, a source of cheap models for you …))
Here goes, the collected 2 minute gesture drawings of the last 48 hours. Gals w/ or w/o weapons, men w/ or w/o underwear, and a few faces to round it up.
60 second gestures from quickposes.com. Gals with swords, pistols and rifles, or just their bare hands.
(Stabilo point 88 fine 0,4 on brown envelope. )
So, I go back to figure drawing classes regularly, starting tomorrow night.
I’m going to continue from where I stopped with the ink class, so I’m planning to use paint brush and India ink on whatever I have at hand. To get into the swing of things, I’ve attempted a few sketches on newsprint tonight. All based on photo references.
Urban Sketching (USk), part 2.
Back from an afternoon in the fading sun on the top steps of Bonn’s historical Rathaus (town hall).
Looking down upon “Em Höttche” (a “typical” German tavern) and a few bistro, cafes. It was getting cold as the sun finally decided to leave us at 8 pm and the sketching process of my first picture (45 minutes with 2B pencil, kept sharp with a sand paper board) accelerated more and more. In the end, I used the accelerated technique to sketch the view onto the market place in Bonn from the flight of stairs, where JFK, CDG and QE2 have all stood before me (10 minutes, “F” pencil).
Today was the last night at my inking course.
I didn’t really get into the swing of things, but came out with this flowing water study. No references were used here. The teacher gives you a few ideas and let’s you make the mistakes for yourself. I’m especially not very fond of the smokestacks in the background.
Well, I’ve found a group, or they’ve found me, … what ever.
We meet weekly here in town, in the evenings. Only ladies there today, not that I bother too much, I’m used to it. But I’m told there a at least two other men who regularly participate. I’m looking forward to more of this and hope the weather holds.
And this is what my first 90 minutes brought about.
(2B, 110gr, 21x30cm)
Stuartdraws 