Urban Church drawing.

Last week I attended a sketchcrawl in Geertruidenberg , a very small town with a nice centre with old houses. I started with a coffee at a  terrace at the market-square from where I had a nice view on the old trees around the square and  the top of the tower of the old church just visible above the trees.

                                                        © Gertjan Velthuizen

While drawing this I had no idea that some time later  I would be on top of the tower, making my second drawing of the day !
The organizer of this sketch session had arranged that we could visit the  Geertruids-church. 
The verger  welcomed us kindly and gave us a guided tour .
And took us up the tower. From were we had a stunning view.
With a strange contrast.
One sees the market-square, the old trees, the old houses , and lots of green trees further away
and then .....the  giant chimney of the powerplant . Dominating the horizon.
At first I thought not to draw it, but this was an urban sketchers trip, we draw what we see.

                                                                 © Gertjan Velthuizen
So there it is .
There was a nice old ballustrade to keep us from falling down, so I drew  some of the pillars too.
As happens with old churches , during the ages , there were parts destroid, rebuilt, things build but never finished, parts added and taken away. So this building has a rich history.
The last drawing I made in the church , a small one. Well most of my drawings are small, but this one is really small.

                                                                      © Gertjan Velthuizen
             

Monochrome and a bit of color

However spring is all around, some of my latest drawings are monochrome, and it was fun to do.
But first some color.
At the start of this month ( april) lots of yellows from the coltsfoot and pilewort were all around ,
the willows started to blossom too, (we call the flowers  "katjes"),giving early spring a lot of color:

                                                    © Gertjan Velthuizen



At the start of April there was a very nice sketchcrawl in "Den Haag", organized by the urban sketchers Den Haag. We had great weather and a lot of beautyfull sketchers !
Among some color sketches I made a monochrome one too:

 © Gertjan Velthuizen

I had fun with that , so during the rest of the month  I made some more  drawings in ink, with a wash of the same ink:

 © Gertjan Velthuizen

 I like a brown  for my nature drawings and I used a Faber-Castell Pitt-artist pen with sepia ink for a long time. It is getting empty however , so I bought a new brown ink ( Noodlers bulletproof brown #41) and a new pen to carry it (TWSBI ECO-T). I love both !!
I was on a fishing trip to Germany were I drew  this stairs to the bridge over the river we fished (Kyll , at Kyllburg)

 © Gertjan Velthuizen

 At  the "Waalbos" I did a little landscape with this lovely ink!
For the ink-wash I used a waterbrush and with that I took the ink right of the nib of the pen.

 © Gertjan Velthuizen

A sign of spring

Temperatures go up and down , spring isn't far away but winter is still here.

                                                             © Gertjan Velthuizen

 During a short walk I made several small sketches.
The group of trees is a stand alone in the fields , standing there for years.  A bike path and a walking path  go right beside it, so it is probably to busy nowadays,  but some time ago when  there was only meadow around it , it was a favourite  resting  place for the buzzards.
On several places the yellow flowers of the coltsfoot are popping out of the ground. One day there are none , next day countless! First signs of spring !
The blue heron looks a bit strange  .
I touched the the ink before it dried properly, giving the heron a weird smudge on his head . I like weird birds.......

                                                           © Gertjan Velthuizen