Crete: Spinalonga

Spinalonga was formerly a leprosy island, untill 1950 or so (when medicine came available). The area is a well known tourist attraction, and quite nice to visit. We had to wait for the return ferry, which gave me the opportunity to make this sketch of the entrance gate. I couldn't finish the paintwork, as the boat arrived.

Adiemus (Karl Jenkins)

Last Friday and Saturday, Gertie and I sang in the Limburgs Concert Choir, for the Dutch premiere of the renowned symfony "Adiemus" by Karl Jenkins. It was a symfonic piece with about 120 singers, 3 solist singers and about 40 musicians. We also sang South African choir pieces. We sang in Landgraaf and the concert house in Maastricht, completely sold out. We have rehearsed since april and finally it paid of to a great concert. We are very proud we could participate, under the guidance of Steven van Kempen. 

The choir will perform in January in New York in the Carnegy Hall, unfortunately we can't be there.

Alfa trial run

 Ran a trial run yesterday, through mud and rain, through forests and narrow cartroads. 12,5km, >200m height difference, in 1 hour 18 minutes. I finished about nr. 140 out of 300 runners. (I made a mistake, resulting in a missing time registration, but I know what I did). Which is very good considering there were only 3 guys my age or older.

AI images (5): the burning towers

 

Another AI experiment. I started with the images of the last post (ai-images (4) the wing, september), the drawing and its AI-image (top left and middle). Then I made a new drawing, which actually turned out to be horrible (not shown here).

I lost interest and eventually played around with the blue AI-image and combined it with another AI image theme that I created. Some burning towers in a desolate landscape (top right). That resulted into a new drawing (bottom left). 

Then I generated a new AI image with reverse prompting. But that one became rather like a fake watercolour drawing. But I also experimented with turning a sketch into an image using AI. Rather interesting what the system came up with.

Crete: views from the terrace

Two quick sketches I made while enjoying coffee at a terrace, somewhere in Crete. Top one: the Lassithi plateau, fields with windmills and far away mountains. Bottom one, Piskopiano, from our appartment to the other side of the valley. The idea was strong inkwork and toned down watercolour.

Portrait in pastel

 

Anoter live portrait session, with washed out pastel colours only. I painted the same model before, see 

https://renefijten.blogspot.com/2025/02/portrait-in-acrylic-and-charcoal.html 

Crete: Windmills

A row of windmills on the edge of the Lassithi plateau, in the center of Crete (Greece).
 

Exhibition in Laboe (Germany)

 

The coming few months there is an exhibition of my painting works in Laboe, Germany. 15 of my paintings (oil, acrylic and/or watercolour) are featured there.

It's up above Kiel, quite far from where I live, but in the good hands of Anja Klein (a friend and former collegue).

Armand

 

Live portrait session, this morning at the atleier Annemeik Jongen, Armand. Washed out pastel on paper.

Crete: sunday morning in Mochos

 

Last Sunday (our last day in Greece) we were driving to the Lassithi plateau, in the middle of Crete. It was Sunday morning, and we were sitting on a sunny terrace. Across were a few men enjoying coffee and Raki after Mass.

Crete: Agios Nikolaos harbour

 

Another drawing from Greece, I spotted this little boat under repair in the harbour of Agios Nikolaos. Pencil and ink on location, watercolour and some hatching in our appartment.

Crete, Greece: Piskopiano

 

Just returned from Crete, Greece. We had a great week with lovely weather. This is the view from our appartment, overlooking the hills, the sea and the sun, from our own private swimming pool.

The appartment was really nice, brandnew and very well detailed (architecturally speaking).

Clemensdomein

 

Clemensdomein, in Brunssum, near Merkelbeek. It's an old church (from about 1000AD), a few km from my house. For years this church was surrounded by a large and renowned monastry. But the monastry was abandoned and demolished some 10 years ago. You can view the church again how it looked like before 1900.

Coney Island after the rain

 

Finished another oil painting, on board (MDF) 50x60cm. It is called: "Coney Island after the rain", and was based on a picture I took in 2019 during our visit to NYC. The actual building is not so gloom, and I added a 70s car instead of a few campers. But the actual lookthrough towards the "wonder wheel" is really there.

I finished the painting for the upcoming painting exhibition in Laboe, Germany.

Vaesrade in bamboo pen and ink

 

This afternoon, drinig with my bicycle through the hills near our house. Quick ink sketch (with reed pen) and some watercolour on Canson aquarel paper.

Cadillac Fleetwood 1952

 

Went to a vintage car meeting in Heerlen (Cruise-in). I have drawn on these occasions before, always nice to see real old cars. This was a beautiful CadillacFleetwood 1952, a huge car, but beautifully restored. 

AI images (4). The wing.

 

Next installment of my AI game. I used the Nike of Samothrace drawing (with colours) to generate a prompt. As stated in the last post, it resulted in different images. I liked the interior one the best, but as you can see the statue was gone. I replaced it for a single wing (representing the Nike statue), and added some smoke. See above drawing, made with a pilot Parrellel pen with non-waterproof ink. 

Then I put it in the generator again, which led to horrible results. All very soft, girly like, fake watercolour images of pigeons flying in clouds of flowers, in pink, red, yellow and green. Yuck. 

So I had to tweak the prompts a bit  to get my wing and ruined buildings back again. And I grew tired of all the red, so I guided the generator towards grey and sepia. The result (through GPT-4o and GPT image) is shown below (bottom right). I will use that one to make a new drawing. It's time for the wing to leave the building.

AI images experiment (3)

 

As you can see I gave the ink drawing of the last AI experiment installment some shades. (done with a pentel Parrallel pen which has non-permanent red ink). Now I put this through the reversed prompting program, which translates the image into a text (which you can reuse again to generate new images). Interesting enough, different text machines deliver totally different images, of which the focus is different. Sometimes drawing style, sometimes colour, sometimes subject. The last one (Florence) even specified a red bird, which the picture didn't even show. Pictures all made by Stable Diffusion 3.0. It clearly shows how you need to work your prompting to get the results you want.

The images: top left: original drawing; right: Joycaption; second row left: GPT4o-mini; right: Florence.

1/2 marathon 2025

 

Ran a half marathon yesterday. In Heerlen, the Obvion run. Finished at 1 hour 58 minutes as number 304 out of 450 runners. The weather was perfect: 14 degrees, sunny and a little wind. 

I am rather proud of myself, not so bad for a 67 year old guy.

Terstraten (Nuth)

A sketch I made on a nice warm afternoon, in a small Hamlet called Terstraten, a few kilometers from my house. Already zome weeks ago, but had no time to post this earlier.