Crushed the whole ‘making dinner’ thing today:

#eatsleepraverepeat

Today I had a big plan to take the waterbus up the river to explore a city called Dordrecht. I got to the station, waited for about five minutes and then proceeded to get poured on in a flash rainfall. The sky looked grey as far as I could see so I figured it would be a rainy day. I retreated back to the house and decided to spend the day working on a painting. Ironically, 40 minutes after I got back to the house and started working, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day.

This is a painting of Maasvlakte 2, the man made land at the end of the Port of Rotterdam that is the same size as Rotterdam’s airport. It’s built from sand pumped up from the bed of the North Sea. On the horizon are power plants and oil refineries that power the daily requirements of the port.

This afternoon I walked over to the art store to pick up some more white paint. Through the shelves I heard a familiar American accent (much more rare in Rotterdam than Amsterdam, I suppose) and turned the corner to investigate. I met a woman named Renee van der Stelt who is an artist in residence north of Rotterdam. She is a drawing professor in Baltimore and had some great suggestions about how to visualize and diagram all the conceptual ideas I’ve got rolling around in my head. Check out her website here. It was refreshing to have a brief chat with someone from the East Coast.

Played a rugby game last night! 19-5 win.

Next week, I’m turning into a little bit more of a nomad. I’m meeting people all over the Netherlands so going to see a lot of the country and hopefully get some awesome insight from big shots in the professional world of water management.

As well as my sketchbook, I keep a  journal with super small pages. I actually have a lot more fun drawing in that journal than in the big sketchbook. It’s cool integrating drawings into the writing. Whereas the big sketchbook had so much intimidating white space that I feel obligated to fill up. I like the small pages.

I have another bigger painting in progress. Hopefully I’ll get that to you soon.