The current Cathedral in Münster dates from 1265. The first church on the site was built in the 9th century and a second in the 10th or 11th, demolished to build the current structure.
It was badly damaged in WWII. It was not restored to its state before the war. The rose window has been vastly simplified, for instance.
We passed through this lovely medieval town, mooring in town while we explored the area. It is my favorite German town!
I recently was asked to do a book cover for a small publisher by the author who is a fan of my Music series of pen and ink drawings. These drawings are done at the Palau de la Musica in Valencia while in the audience. The lights are dimmed and typically we sit in the balcony where the sound is best. It is a fair distance from the musicians. So between the low light and the distance, I can not see the drawing I am making and the musicians are a bit on the fuzzy side, the faces and hand in particular being particularly small. Thus the results, which I do not see until the lights come up, are unpredictable and totally spontaneous. These are circumstances that are hard if not impossible to duplicate without renting the auditorium. In addition the author had a particular figure in mind and probably would not want half of him to be represented by a blind swipe with my water brush and be missing other body parts and the gesture altogether. So I had to mimic my own art under normal lighting and distance circumstances yet maintain major aspects of the figure in the photo she sent. It was a challenge, frustrating at times, but in the end she got a drawing she liked and thought would work well for her.
Here are my first versions, which is similar to the final one but which has far more detail in the background than the latter, which only has 3 shafts of light. I did not realize how stark she wanted it to be. It gives the figure so little context. But it was what she had in wind.
Both of these drawings are available for purchase.
This pen and ink is of a cove in Brandenburg, off the River Havel. Brandeburg an der Havel, the full name of the city, is one of the most charming in Germany and rivals many in Europe.
Looking to capture the image and personality of this attractive and strong young woman, I was again guided and inspired by the principles of portraiture laid out by Rembrandt.
Looking through the double glass doors, the terraza stetches about 10 meters along the street 5 floors below. The sun hits portions of the walls and floor of this outdoor area. A neighbor looks on.
I did this portrait following as closely as I could Rembrandt’s approach to portrait painting. However he used oil paints and I use acrylics. Blending with acrylics is problematic as they dry so quickly so you have to paint afresh where planes join, although retarders help. His models were in person whereas I use photos, as do most of us given the hours and hours it takes to paint a portrait. Some do a combination of a sitting during which they take photos and work from them later. In the British national portrait competition they had a model and all the artists worked from photos while the sitter could move around freely and talk to the interviewer. Not all photos are professionally done so the lighting is not easy to deal with, as was the case with the photo I used here. The subject was in a snow scene, cheeks red here and there from the cold and hardly any shadows from the diffuse lighting.
During our many travels to the Netherlands we have seen many boats and owned two ourselves. Viking is our current boat. We have seen two Tall Ships parades that terminated in Amsterdam, one in 2000 and another in 2015. These are magnificent sailing ships with three to fives masts. Here are my paintings and drawings.
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Patrick Stewart has aged, making for interesting challenges for an artist, so I took it on.
Patrick Stewart b. 1940 an English actor, director and producer. He started as a Shakespearean actor before going to television and film. He has been nominated for multiple awards. He is one of my favorite actors. I watched some episodes of Picard just to see him do the part. It was otherwise a not series I found particularly interesting. The popup control panels were astonishing.
From a scene in The Crown, Anne with her photographer boyfriend