Amsterdam Afterwards

March 14, 2020Leave a comment

The Symposium finished, people went there separate ways, some together, some sticking about in Amsterdam, and I decided to have a lie in and a late start for a day of wandering and sketching some of the parts of the city I hadn’t explored much yet. My family were arriving in town later that day so I had a lot of time for some more sketching before the full-on tourist part of the trip started. The temperatures had dropped, the skies started to cloud up a little, it was still busy out but I finally had a bit of headspace. I walked over to Herengracht and sat down by the canal to draw this bridge. I saw a few other sketchers here and there, nobody I knew, but we know we’re all in the sketching family so there’s usually a nod of respect.

I really like this particular junction at the corner of Leliegracht and Keizersgracht. Amsterdam has a lot of charm. I think I didn’t love Amsterdam, overall, it felt a little stressful with the tight sidewalks and cyclists, the tourists and the partygoers, and the dirt, far too many cigarette butts on the ground, but there is no denying Amsterdam is still beautiful, and so unlike many other cities. The first time I came to Amsterdam in the summer of 1998 I had the same impression, though I had also spent all night on a train from Berlin. There is so much to search though, no shortage of places to explore. I mooched around bookshops, tried samples in cheese shops, got lost in alleys and small squares, or as lost as my map-enable apple watch would let me. This side of the city west of Damrak is full of postcard views and long canal vistas. I knew I’d come back so I wandered back toward the Centraal Station area (perhaps my least favourite station area), had a look around the football-themed store Copa (perhaps my most favourite store in Amsterdam), buying two pairs of socks, one which features Diego Maradona doing the ‘Hand of God’ in 1986, and Zidane headbutting Materazzi in the 2006 world cup final, and went to meet up with my family. The next couple of days here would be doing more of the tourist stuff – a boat trip around the canals, Anne Frank’s house, the Van Gogh Museum, and a change of hotel.

Here are a couple of sketches I did near the Centraal station. Teh lamp-post thing below looks like some kind of city warning against public drunkenness.

I didn’t sketch as much once the family arrived, just a few here and there, I think I had earned the break. Above is a quick one I drew at Spui while eating Flemish Frites (see below, they were delicious). I can’t reiterate how much I love the frites over here, they do taste delicious.

I did try to do a quick sketch of the tall houses at Damrak one evening, just to mess about with some of the new materials we were given at the symposium.Not my usueal sketching but fun to mess about.

Below, I drank a beer called “Bastaard” by Hertog Jan while we had an Indonesian meal at Kantjil by Spui. Sketching with pencil can get messy as you can see by the filthy page.

And here is one of the little tiny toy cars they have here in Amsterdam to get around the super narrow streets. I never did sketch one; I asked Lapin who loves to sketch cars if he was going to add one to his collection, but even he said no, that’s no car. Look at it, it’s like something from Richard Scarry. I expected another one to come along looking like a big carved out apple , and a pencil and a banana.

I did change hotels when my family arrived, moving from the Grand Amrâth to the Doubletree, which my wife had booked (she got a really good deal). It was a nice hotel for sure, very modern, with amazing views over the city, but zero of the character of the Grand Amrâth. But these views! I had to sketch it. I did go up to the rooftop lounge to look over the city, but I did not want to sketch up there, it wasn’t really my thing to hang out there. The Doubletree hotel is right across the canal from the Grand Amrâth so we could see the whole building in all its glory from across the water, and I would get up for a run past it, and some of that lovely fresh juice from a nearby supermarket. I miss all the nice juices and foods from Holland. I would like to come back and explore more of the Netherlands. The Dutch people I met at the symposium came from all over and there are so many places I know not that much about. Aaargh, the world is so big, there is so much I want to see before I’m done. I want to see it all, and sketch it all.

But I was done with Amsterdam, we all were. Time to move on, time to go back to Belgium and eat some more frites and waffles. But the heatwave wasn’t done with us yet. We went to get our Thalys but of course, there were cancellations and delays, hung over from the travel chaos a week before. We waited and waited, a few hours with hundreds of others, until in the end a Thalys came and everyone was lucky to get on. But we had first class reservations (a good call as it turns out, for very little more cost) and so I was given a couple of free Belgian beers (a couple of cans of Leffe Blonde) in our carriage for the journey. It was all a bit stressful at the time, but I’m usually travel lucky, it all works out in the end. When life gives you lemons, draw in your sketchbook and be patient, and life will eventually give you Leffe. Onwards to Brussels!

class of 18

October 31, 2018October 31, 2018Leave a comment

This is another view of A Street in Davis. When I say ‘A Street’ I don’t mean ‘a street’, I mean obviously it’s ‘a street’, but this is ‘A’ Street, like when you emphasize ‘The’ and pronounce it as ‘Thee’ like it’s the only one you need to consider. Ok enough of that. I have sketched this scene before over the years but not looking quite like this. That textbook store has been closed for ages, but that ‘Class of 18’ graffiti is new. Unless it’s from 1918 which it isn’t. Bit of roadwork going on here, a few bins. A lunchtime sketch drawn after a meeting. This will look different next time I draw this corner.

porto perambulations

August 16, 2018August 15, 20184 Comments

Taking a break from the people sketches, here are a few more sketches of Porto’s streets and hills. Before going to Porto, I checked out the roads I might be walking through on Google Street View, and picked my hotel behind the train station thinking, yeah that’s not too bad. My legs felt otherwise. The streets are pretty steep! There were a few different ways back to the hotel, none of which were easy climbs and one of which (Rua da Cima) was a little bit dodgy feeling at night, some seedy looking establishments behind doorways with ladies leaning in the half-light and men lurking in shadows nearby. So, I explored a few different routes. The street above is not far from there, and I came across it while walking down toward the Se Cathedral area from my hotel, this is Rua do Loureiro. I really liked sketching how the street weaved downwards, with those colourful garlands crossing from window to window. They are left over from a recent city celebration, I was told. As I sat and sketched, on an overcast Wednesday morning, some children played in the street nearby. It felt very much like a neighbourhood. That’s a bit patronising; of course it’s a neighbourhood. Porto is struggling at the moment with a relatively recent upsurge in popularity, with many locals being priced out of the old Porto quarters by the influx of tourist apartments. If the graffiti I read around town is accurate, anyway. Porto is no longer the undiscovered secret it used to be.

Above, another street that ran next to me hotel, this one was right outside my window. Rua da Madeira. Again, one that I didn’t mind going down in daylight, a bit less so at night (though there weren’t as many small seedy, ahem, ‘nightclubs’ along the way). It’s less a road and more an alley with a large staircase. However, it’s filled with graffiti, much of which looks commissioned by the city, large interesting murals mixed in with down to earth tagging. I had to draw it. This part is as far as you can drive down from Batalha, before the steps begin, running alongside the back of the Sao Bento train station. Streets behind train stations look like this all over the world. Even in Burnt Oak; it reminded me of those alleys behind the tube station on Watling Avenue, like the one I used to go down to go to Cubs when I was a kid. This is very far away from Davis, but I felt a little bit more at home here. There is a nice view over Porto, with the Clerigos tower in the distance.

This is the bottom of that street. It is really steep! I stood next to Sao Bento, in the doorway of a hostel, on the Saturday afternoon to sketch this. Across the street some members of a youthful rock band were drinking the day away. I know they were a rock band because (1) they had long hair, and (2) I had seen them earlier in the day waiting outside a rock club across from here with all their instruments, while the singer (I presume he was the singer, he looked like the singer) was on the phone to someone complaining that they couldn’t get in to leave their instruments somewhere. Obviously a band on tour, with not enough roadies (or any). I knew they were a rock band then. They sounded Australian or south African, but they may just have been British and just Talking Like That. Anyway they were getting lubricated as you do when you are in a foreign country and you are young and in a rock band, minding their own business, and I heard another man swearing at them, a local by the sound of it, very drunk himself, swearing in English. Then a very large man, who must have been a roadie or their minder or dad or someone, escorted said swearing-man away from the cafe. That is it, that’s the whole story. I’m glad I wasn’t in a band in my early 20s. I was rock and roll enough, without growing my hair long.

Now this street was very normal and wide and a great option for walking home at night, however it’s just too damned steep. Rua 31 de Janeiro, which slides down from Batalha and then slides up again to Clerigos, took me absolutely ages to walk up at night. By the time I reached the top I was exhausted. Thankfully there was an ice cream shop at the top that stayed open until almost midnight. The top of this street is at the junction of Batalha and Rua Santa Catarina, a much nicer part of town with more upmarket shops and – amazingly – no steep hill to climb. I never did sketch the Cafe Mjestic, nor did I find the Bolhao Market nearby, but I did sketch the outside of this lovely bookshop, below. In case you are wondering, no, this is not the famous bookshop of Porto, Livraria Lello. That is the one with the magnificent curving staircase. I never actually went there. Well, IO tried, but on a Saturday afternoon it was packed with a very long line out of the door. You have to buy tickets to get in. The Urban Sketchers instructors were all given a free couple of hours after closing to come in and sketch one evening, but I’m not an instructor so couldn’t do that. It was also further away from where I was staying than I realized. Ah well, I’ll save that place for next time. And maybe next time, I’ll stay at a hotel closer to the bottom of the hill.