March 17 2019

It is 17 of March 2019, and I am on my way to a life painting session in Amsterdam. The weather this very moment is dry. I can even see a glimpse of the sun but it is overcast, and there are plenty of showers. I packed my rain gear. I am sitting comfortably but it is a very short train, and I am going to Amsterdam Zuid, and from there I will take bus 18 from the new bus stop min you. This is my alternative route since they closed tram 7 in Amsterdam.

It has been raining heavily for almost two weeks. It is encouraging to see a glimpse of the sun. These days I have not posted to Instagram for almost three months. I am writing these blogs, but I am not giving myself time to upload them. The blogs are mounting up in my cloud as well as the paintings.

The things I am working on every spare moment is the new house and the lot. We got our development plan accepted, and tomorrow at noon sharp we will sign a preliminary agreement with the municipality for that we will buy the lot in the future. At this moment we will pay 10 percent of the ground. We will be allowed to become full owners when we got all permits in place. For this, we have a theoretical limit of one year, but in reality, we got five months for getting the permits in place.

There is a giant list of permits to get in place. The house needs to be constructed, and the lot needs to be designed. Well, that part I did in Fusion 360, so that is fine I suppose. The house will be drawn by the building company so that part is fine. However, there is no drawing of the stairs, and the electrical system needs to be designed. I installed a cad program for drawing the electrical system. There are symbols I have never seen before. There are a lot of things to learn.

When I arrived at the station at Zuid I discovered that bus 15 was temporarily discontinued! I went with another bus to Haarlemmermeer station then walked to where the old route of bus 15 still went. I arrived on time. Only to discover that the model had got sick. We were about to draw each other was the idea of Saskia.

The artists and models this time were Ron, Saskia, Irene, and Me. Lydia did not model. First Irene sat model for 35 minutes. Then Saskia, Ron and finally me. Lydia missed her chance to be drawn by us. I think I did surprisingly well.

When the paintings were finished, we took photos of each other work with the model. On the way home I took tram 14 to Jan van Galenstreet. There I took tram 50 to Amsterdam Zuid. Then I took an Intercity to Almere. I need to remember this route as well because now I know the buses are also elusive features of reality.

I have my bag on my lap an on that my little keyboard and phone. It feels okay to type the blog like that. I must say that the way home was much easier than the route to the studio.

The weather is nice right now. Not very warm but there are little fluffy clouds and no precipitation.