Bicycles: An illustrated Farewell

Some vehicles can feel like friends. I’m sure you know someone who gave their car a name, or maybe you named your car too? It’s quite a common thing to do, for some people. I travelled around in Australia in a car called Lucy, for example. She was one trusty old station wagon, for sure. 
Well, here in Amsterdam, my trusty old hand-me-down bicycle has brought me to many places for years. Amsterdammers take the bicycle to get around in the city. Even when it rains, or it snows, we hop onto our steel steads to get from A to B. We even have bike flats in the city center, floating on the canals, to park our bikes and prevent the streets to be cluttered with steel. Doesn’t help: bicycles are parked everywhere anyway. 

I’ve portrayed my bike every now and then. Here's a recent post about it, if you're curious. And at some point it started to evolve. From my trusty bike to my rusty bike. 

Time to say goodbye. Because really, it was just not safe anymore to use it. Half falling apart, it wasn't worth fixing it anymore, it needed to be replaced.
But because it has been such a trusty companion, I drew it once more, and told its story by making notes around it, and lifting out details.
An illustrated farewell:



Speaking of stories... Just before the weekend, we launched the new kourse in Sketchbook Skool, and the theme is 'Storytelling'. Melanie Reim, Mattias Adolfsson, Jean-Christophe Defline, Veronica Lawlor, Danny Gregory and I will be teaching about how we visually tell stories in our art journals.
I am so excited about Sketchbook Skool, and the community of amazing artists that is growing, with each semester! We only started thinking of it in November 2013 and now we already developed this third kourse, and proud of it too!
The first lesson will be on October 3 and you can enroll on sketchbookskool.com. Just sayin'!

I decided to buy myself a brand new bicycle, and although we still need to become good friends, I drew the new bicycle at its first day in my posession.

I bring it with me into Amsterdam, or rather, it brings me! 
 And I am 'customizing' it, by adding cool stuff - like this basket on the front, to put transport things in; groceries or more fancy things like art tools!
 I'm sure there's more bicycle portraits to come!
What is your favorite vehicle for transportation? A car? Train? A scooter? A boat? Your feet? (I sure love drawing the pair of them, too!)



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