thao mai


january sketchcrawl in frankfurt, with thao mai. this was drawn in a japanese bakery called imori, where they serve sencha tea and melon bread. It was filled with asian tourists and bankers on their weekend stroll. I´ll probably spend the next sketchcrawl in Hamburg, looking forward to some harbour sketching.

london #2

 

i sat down on a bench and started drawing the tower bridge. after i while a group of students arrived, obviously on a a schooltrip, gathered around me, and their teacher told them about medieval london. All of that in german, while they obviously thought i couldn´t understand them. nice way to get some honest compliments and a free tour guide.


after getting back, i was stuck at the airport for some hours, waiting for the next bus. frankfurt hahn is a mighty unattractive place, so there was nothing to do, nothing to draw. Nothing except the gossip section in the "daily mail", here depicting "keira knightley´s mystery companion".

london #1

 
eva writes down what you can now read here, provided you understand german. while i sipped my coffee i once again tried my best to make her look older than she actually is.
 
and 15 minutes of sketching at the victoria & albert museum.

istanbul

drawings of istanbul in january, spent a week there with my roommate from barcelona and two more friends. we stayed in sultahmet, an old neigboorhood. our hostel roof offered great views of the sea of marmara:


ferry trip to the princes islands, drawn as we left büyükada. relaxing after an entire day spent walking, drinking sweet, black tea.


visiting topkapi palace, home to the ottoman sultans.

 

drinking more tea next to the sülemaniye mosque, in an outdoor café with lots of turkish flags.

 

and testing my moleskine in the turkish bath, though it got a little wet and the bic´s ink got more fluid in the 50 ° C warm air. noone paid me any attentione so i suppose i didn´t offend anyoone - at least noone turkish, there were only tourists in the bath. very relaxing atmosphere, i can only recommend hamam drawing...

kaffee

an old man in a department store café. i used to take my break there and after some time i noticed that some people go there every day, like him. impeccably dressed, he sits there for hours. he´s mostly alone, but sometimes he chats with other people who enjoy the cheap coffee and that noone bothers you no matter how long you sit there.

strandbunker


during the 2nd world war, more than 5000 bunkers were built on denmark´s coasts to complete the atlantic wall, so the scandinavian coasts would be "protected" from an allied invasion.
many of those bunkers remain there more than 65 years later, sunken into the sand, crumbling...
it´s a strange architecture. all that bulky, graffiti-sprayed concrete..
again, very cold on the beach. drew each bunker in 1-2 minutes, then wandered on to the next, trying to warm my fingers inbetween sketches. no choice but to do all the cross-hatching from memory.

mona lisa

oldie but goodie.the "poor" mona lisa was used as a cover illustration for stuz magazine, on the subject of low public funds for culture. drawn with trusty old bic and copics, composition in photoshop.

winter portraits


 


All drawings done during the hvide sande trip, outside temperature around - 8 °C made indoor sketching very appealing... my models complied and dedicated themselves to their holiday activities, which consisted of drinking wine, watching tv, searching the internet for christmas recipes and crocheting socks.

toy cars


Actually, these are vehicles on the airport of Valencia. For the first time i´ve noticed how strange some of them look- asymmetric, bulky and square-edged, with some hidden, mysterious purpose i could not decipher.