Introduction

On September 9th, I left for Italy with my aunt and cousin. After spending two weeks dashing around there, I headed to Paris by myself. Two weeks in Paris were followed by visits to Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels in Belgium, Amsterdam, and London and Bath England. I returned to the United States on November 9th with two completed sketchbooks. Sitting in the Heathrow airport waiting for my flight home, I took a good 45 minutes to look through the sketchbooks and was surprised by the growth evident over the course of the sketchbooks. The sketches are backdated to correspond with the day on which they were made; please take time to look around and feel free to leave comments.

London

London Science Museum

London

Natural History Museum. This museum is beautifully designed. Instead of gargoyles, there are pterodactyls and animals and carved monkeys climb ladders in the atrium.

Science Museum

Bath

London

Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood

V&A Museum
British Museum
Tate Modern

London

London

On a free walking tour I learned that these lions are a little off. The artist did not have access to an entire taxidermic lion nor a live lion and so used a stuffed lion's head to model the head, and his dog as a model for the body.

Amsterdam, Holland

Brussels, Belgium

Ghent & Brussels, Belgium

Left: Ghent. Right: Brussels.
Ghent

Brugge & Ghent, Belgium

The one thing I'd like to say about Belgium: What is better than chocolates, Bosch, and Van Eyck in fairy-tale medieval wonderlands?

Right: Sketches from the Ghent Altarpiece finished by Jan Van Eyck (his brother began it). The reason I originally went to Belgium was to see this altarpiece.

Left: Brugge. Right: castle in Ghent.

Brugge, Belgium

Brugge, Belgium

Sketchbook number two!

Brugge, Belgium