Hello my friend!

My friend Aurore went with her family to her homeland, France, for the rest of the summer. 

I'm posting here some sketchers from my sketchbook I didn't upload - done during our last meetings.

Aurore sketching in Sarona

our last evening in Puah with Aurore and Irit

Aurore says: "There is nothing better than bread with butter!" and I add: "and good friends :)"

Already miss you, enjoy your vacation!

Together in the One Tent

Together in the One Tent - is the name of the short story for children by Moshe Kron I illustrated for the last issue of Einayim magazine. It tells about Syrian family that going to leave Damascus and to live in the refugee's camp. It shows how every family member deal with the coming change, their expectations and fears. Here are bit of the process of working on illustration.

Big children

Our children are growing so fast! My oldest son turned 22 in the last weekend, here is he (on the right) with a group of his friends.

All the square's a stage

Our last Sketchcrawl took a place at Magen Daviv Square - very busy point in Tel Aviv, which turns at Friday mornings to one of the best shows in the city! People that rush to shop at the Carmel Market, or to hang around at artist's market Nahalat Benyamin, or to drink a cup of coffee at Shenkin street, cross the square, which surrounded by buildings in various architecture styles. Street performers, beggars, orthodox Jews offering to put tefillin, armed policemen - everything mixed into one never ending show, bizarre and real simultaneously...
All that urban sketcher need to do at that place - is to sit down, to observe, and to try to capture the stories as fast as he can.

It was so fun, as always, to meet our constantly growing sketchers group, to chat, to share, to get some inspiration!

Two friends - digital and "real" (tools)

Here are two recent sketches of my daughter and her friend. First one done on iPad with Procreate:

Second one - with ink on paper:

There is nothing like "real" tools - you get dirty, you make mistakes (there is no "undo"). But still, digital toys are also nice.

Amazing Thailand - part 1 - the islands

I'm back from our family vacation to Thailand, my first visit to the Far East, and I'm totally charmed! Everything's very different there, even for me , living at the Middle East for the last 20 years. If I were needed to use graphic designer's terminology,  I would say that this place got more contrasts and more saturation. There are most beautiful, calm, white-sand and turquoise-water beaches and busy, super-crowded streets, full of colors, smells and sounds. There are modern luxurious buildings and infrastructures, and people living in primitive sheds, as they used to live ages before. I know, two and a half weeks isn't enough to understand anything, but it's enough to charm me and to make me want to come back.
I'm not so good with words, lucky I have my Thai sketchbook to share with you, which I hope will show a bit this wonderful journey. I wish I could sketch all the time, unfortunately, I could mostly sketch at waiting times, but I'm happy with what I have.
We've spend two week on  Koh Samui and Koh Phangan islands, enjoying its beaches and travelling across them a bit. Here are some sketches from beautiful beaches :

and busy streets in the villages of the islands:

and, of course, some food-related sketches:

At the end of the trip we spent 4 days in Bankok, but I'll tell about it in the next post. Stay tuned!
Meanwhile you can see my entire Thai sketchbook on flickr.

WW SketchCrawl 39 at Charles Clore Beach

We've got perfect weather and perfect site for WW SketchCrawl 39. Beaches and promenades were always my favorite sketching places. But at this season, a moment before it gets too hot, it's really perfect place!

I've started with the view on the promenade, capturing some of my fellows sketchers

After warming up, my friends and I moved to Alma Beach coffee shop and a half of the place were filled by us, sketchers ;-)

view to the beach from Alma Beach coffee shop

 

at Alma I've captured some other sketchers at work :-)

Then I get down to the beach and captured some views there:

It is always nice to see familiar faces of sketchers that coming every sketchcrawl. And it's even nicer to see newcomers that joined for the first time and rediscovered the joy of sketching after a break of many years!

People and other animals

Here are sketches from our last Sketchcrawl at Park Hayarkon near Bavli small zoo area. The place was perfect for lazy sketcher - I didn't need to move from my place - my "models" just moved opposite me.

Sketching animals isn't my cup of tea, but I have to admit, it was fun!
Well, sketching people was fun as well ;-)

Sketches from daily routine

Finally I've got to scan some pages from my current sketchbook, so here are some mixed stuff: my family and friends, street and indoor scenes - sketches from daily routine.
Sketching during trips to exotic places is really fun, but finding stories in everyday life is real essence of urban sketching for me!