Amsterdam: Invaders, Other Street Art, Public Art, Buildings, and Bicycles!? (Part One)

This has taken too long to get to... 

Amanda and I were away for most of June and part of July visiting Europe. Amanda's been to Europe a few times. This was my first time. It was actually my first time leaving North America and the first significant time outside of Canada! (and I've only been to the United States a handful of time, the most recent being 31 years ago, and that was just to fly to Minneapolis and then to Detroit... to visit Amanda's folks in Windsor Ontario - just across the border - because it was significantly cheaper to do so than flying directly to Windsor through Canada...) 

Our first stop on the European trip was Amsterdam. This being my art blog, I'm mostly going to share some photos of ART (and architecture) that we saw during out trip. because it is Amsterdam, there will probably be some bicycles in the pictures. 

I took some sketchbooks along, hoping to FILL them with sketches of what I saw along the way... but I was travelling with Amanda who is allergic to idleness and sitting still, so I didn't get to to nearly as much of that as I'd hoped. The plan, at some point, is to finish filling them with drawings from photos I took... and maybe when they're done I'll share those as well! 

These posts will just be some of the pictures I took along the way. Part of the reason this has taken so long is I took WAY TOO MANY PICTURES, like around 3500+ of them in 30 days we were away!? It's a LOT to go through... 

The first three or four will focus on Space Invaders, Other Street Art, Public Art, and a little bit of architecture... and maybe a few bicycles... (though I do have a bicycle blog... maybe there will be posts there about the bikes...) 

My attention was first draw to the street artist Space Invader through the excellent documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (which I highly recommend seeing if you haven't!). He started (over 20 years ago) making small tile mosaics inspired by the 8-bit graphic art of the video arcade game Space Invaders. Since then he has made over three thousand of them and spread them all over Europe - and other parts of the world. 

I thought it would be fun to go looking for the Invaders in Amsterdam. I had a really good map that showed the locations of all of them. We ended up finding all but one (it could be it is simply no longer there, the Amsterdam Invasion was in 1999!? So they have all been there for 27 years! It's amazing so many WERE still there! 

If faces of people look a little weird in the pictures, it's not because they're AI or anything, I purposely blurred a lot of them (when I remembered to...) 

I didn't make note of exactly which ones were in what place... 

The plan for our first day in Amsterdam (well... first full day of exploring - we'd arrived the previous day at 11am - which felt like... 3am to us...? so we made our way to the hotel and checked in as early as we could and slept a few hours and then just went out and got some groceries and went back to bed...) we planned to mostly just wander around and look for some Space Invaders... and the plan was to try and get BACK to the hotel for 5pm and use the laptop I'd brought to try and register for classes in the fall - as that was my earliest opportunity (which was 9am in Saskatoon)

We did stop at one, small museum in the morning - Sexmuseum Amsterdam! Maybe I'll do a separate post about that... maybe not... 

After the Sexmuseum, the search for Invaders began in earnest...

At the site of the first invader. The map would generally get us to the intersection, or, in this case, bridge... but then we'd have to look around a bit... sometimes we could look at the map and it would be clearly on one side of the intersection or the other... other times... not-so much. 

This one we'd approached from the south and I had looked at that side of the bridge... 

not spotting it on any of the walls nearby I walked off the bridge to the west where I could see the north side of the bridge and there it was... 

The first invader I saw IRL! 

Beside it, as was the case with most of the invaders we found, were other little bits of street art others had installed - or stickers... I wish I'd paid more attention to those from the beginning. Often there were a few stickers. They felt a little like calling cards or something to say; "hey I found it!" or "I was here too!" or something like that...

I kind of wished I'D had some stickers made to bring along and add to the walls... 

I think this is the Oude Kerk - which I believe is the oldest building (still standing) in Amsterdam...? I think it's still a church, but also maybe a community centre and art shows happen there...? We did not go in.

Funny Bike. Magic Mushrooms. 

We did not try either. 

Next Invader encountered. Note all the stickers at this one - and marker tags and comments. 

CLOSE-UP! 

Getting close to the next one - a wall of Shepard Fairey OBEY posters... but the red block the makes that outlines the "OBEY" have totally faded! Wonder how long they've been there. I wonder if it was Mr. Fairey himself that put them up!? Also some other street art and bicycles! 

Look up in the top right - there is a little building detail with a bird. There were a lot of these. I don't know what to call them (other than "building detail" or "architectural detail"..?) I wonder how old they are. Some look as though they could have been added later... some look as though they were part of the original wall... and many of these buildings are HUNDREDS of years old! 

There's the next Invader! Can you spot it amongst all the other stickers and street arts!? 

Closer look. 

Bikes. Art. 

There were a lot of these bikes with a front blue wheel. I wondered what the deal was with that. Amanda noted it was a particular brand of bike that had them all... 

No invader... just more building details and fancy door and Frame and more bicycles... 

Seriously, there were bikes EVERYWHERE... if there was anything solid/bolted down that wasn't directly in a roadway or blocking a door, there was at least one bicycle locked to it... if there wasn't something solid to lock to, but there was space off to the side of a road or pathway that wasn't directly blocking a door, there was often a bicycle left there leaning against the wall or propped up on it's kickstand, with only a wheel lock!? 

The next Invader. After the first one it became a bit of a game. I would get us to the intersection and then Amanda would try and find it before I could...She did find the next few... and then at every intersection we got to where I said, here it is, she would shout "I SEE IT!!" whether she'd actually seen it or not.. just to freak me out! 

This was also the first time I noticed THE FOOT... (The red and black thing just above the invader) there were a series of little street art installations involving what looks like a casting of a partial foot print - a foot stepped into plaster and then the plaster painted and installed on a wall. Others were of a foot dipped in paint and then daubed on a tile or something... I have NO IDEA who did them, but I started noticing them all over (I wish I'd taken more pictures of them) I tried finding out info about them, but could not find ANYTHING!? 

If anyone happens to read this and know what they're about or who made them, I would LOVE to know more!! 

Building looking like it was about to fall over being propped up by wood... and a bike locked to the fence around it!?

Fun little owl on a sign. 

I saw a lot of these fun posters around - particularly in one neighbourhood. I did not call the number (but I was kind of tempted to..) 

Another Invader. 

Also those little beams stick out of the top of almost every building and are used to hoist furniture up to the upper floors (and are brought in through the windows) as the stairways in these buildings are often VERY narrow and almost ladder-like! 

Close-up of the Invader!

EVVEN CLOSER UP!

this is an example of a think on a building that was clearly added later... wondered if it was once a dentists office...? Or the residence of an artist that was not particularly fond of dentists...? 

Buildings. Mural. Bicycles. 

Am I the only one reading this as "LET'S FUCK ART CLUB"...? 

Another Invader location. 

Detail - with more stickers! 

ALSO, I noticed while editing these pictures, at a lot of locations someone else has put up a micro mural(?) with one or two rows of drab coloured tiles and sometimes a row of its-bitsy tiles. 

Another building detail (and more bicycles with blue tires on the front!) 

Detail of the detail! 

Another Invader! 

This was the last one we spotted on our first day in Amsterdam. I think there was one last one we tried to find, but just could not. It was the only one on the map we were unable to locate! 

Public Art - Sculpture! 

It was somewhere near here that I realized it was already 5pm and we sat down nearby to see if I could access the registration system via my phone. I was able to log into my account... but everything was SOOOOOOO SLOOOOW (probably because there were hundreds of other third year students all trying to register at their first available opportunity - to have the best chance of getting into the classes they wanted! 

The universities registration page was not really formatted for working with phones and I could do SOME stuff  and access SOME parts of the site... but the big button that needs to be pressed to SUBMIT your registration did not appear on the screen... so we decided we'd just have to hurry back to the hotel and try to use the laptop and hope all the classes I wanted were still available! 

cool building with lots of statues and gargoyle-like animals. 

Back in Zaandam - where we were staying. We weren't staying at THIS hotel, but another similar-looking one nearby. 

We walked a bit to find a pizza place and order some pizza... then had to walk around for a bit while we waited for it to be cooked... 

found our way to a canal and found this fun little elephant along side it!? 

Building detail

More building details. 

Probably one of the best damned pizzas I've even had in my LIFE!!! 

It was from Bacio Pizza in Zaandam. This one I had was vegan. It was delicious. They do make an incredible variety of vegetarian (and vegan!) and not-so-vegetarian pizzas (and other food!). If ever you find yourself in Zaandam, try it out!! 

And that was our first full day in Amsterdam. There will probably be a part two and three and maybe a part four to "Invaders, Other Street Art, Public Art, Buildings, and Bicycles!?" and then I could do three or four for the galleries we visited!? and that's just AMSTERDAM!? The first week of FOUR that we were away!

Maybe now that I've got going on these it won't take so long for the next one...

Or... maybe this will be it and I won't get around to doing anymore. Who can say!? 

Portraits of Amanda

 I did a few portraits of Amanda while on our trip to Europe, when we had idle moments... which were... few... 

The first was at the Saskatoon Airport before our journey had really even begun!

We were at the airport hours early, so I thought I might as well get started on the drawing! 

The next wasn't until our third or fourth day in Amsterdam, when we stopped to have a meal at the Vegan Temple Bar - I pulled out my small sketchbook - which I carried with me EVERY DAY of the vacation... JUST IN CASE!!

The next was waiting at Amsterdam Centraal station

While we were waiting for our train to France! 

A few days later when we were in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Amanda actually joined a work meeting via her computer. 

The meeting was so long, not only did I DRAW a picture of her... 

I also managed to COLOUR it!? 

finally, on our first morning in Paris, I woke up STUPID early and could not get back to sleep. Amanda was still sleeping, so I drew the apartment from the little table I ate breakfast at. 

The temperature on the afternoon when we arrived was +38°C and stayed around there for most of our stay... it dropped to 31°C in the middle of the night... 

The apartment we rented was NOT air-conditioned, however... Nor did it have screens on the windows... So I didn't feel really confident about leaving the windows open all night and not having bats or rats or mosquitoes or any other number of pests joining us! We got enough flies and mosquitoes in during the hours we were there and awake and had the windows open! 

I still have three or four pictures (or maybe five..?) that I started while I was in Europe, but need to finish up (mostly colouring... and touching up here and there...?). And then the plan was to finish filling up the sketchbooks I'd taken on the trip with drawings done from the thousands of photos I took while there! 

More Sketching in May

(Whoopsie! I was just starting on uploading drawings I did on the Euro trip and realized THIS post about drawings I did back in MAY was still sitting in Drafts!)

I kind of stopped drawing for about a year! 

(Though I did still carry around a sketchbook WITH me everywhere I went!? I literally never leave the house without one!? I just fell out of the habit of getting it out and actually DRAWING anything in it!?) 

So, I have been trying to get back into a regular practice of drawing... and... not doing... GREAT... but... I have been doing SOMETHING... sometimes...  

I drew the set of the last play we went to at the Persephone Theatre for the season. The set was pretty amazing - and the play was okay too! 

This was done in the same sketchbook I was using in Moose Jaw. 

I did try adding colour at home... and... kind of ruined it... Ah, well... 

Amanda watching Death of a Unicorn

This was done in a little 5"x5" I started in 2021 which contains only little sketches of Amanda. 

Waiting at the doctor's office a week or so ago. I was trying out a NEW sketchbook... Art Placement, where I buy almost all of my art supplies, no longer stocks the Handbook watercolour journals by Speedball... so I have been on a hunt for a NEW sketchbook. The have the 100% cotton fibres, 250gsm Hahnemüehle Watercolor Journals, which do look VERY nice... but they only have the landscape format (or squares) which I don't love... I found Opus had some of the 200gsm Hahnemüehle Watercolor Books (and some of them were half price!?) so I ordered a few of those to try out! I do like it much better than the one I'd been using - as it lays open much flatter!!

I hate it when I find a thing I like... and then the next time I go to get one, they've been discontinued or the place I get them from doesn't carry them any more... 

I rode the tandem over to the Royal University Hospital last week to pick up Amanda who'd been there all day with Morgan (who was in for "day surgery"... but ended up staying overnight...?). Amanda needed a lift to the school that she teaches yoga at on Thursday for one of the community associations. I thought I'd see if I could knock out a quick sketch by the bike racks where I was waiting for her... I was waiting and awfully long time and was going to text and see where she was at and realized I had missed nine phone calls!? Apparently where she was was at CITY HOSPITAL!? 

Whoopsie!! 

So I sprinted away and made my way through the labyrinthine maze of detours around all the roadwork going on around RUH and the University Bridge and met Amanda walking up the University Bridge (luckily the cycling and pedestrian pathway on ONE side of the bridge is still open!) and got her to her yoga class on time! Thank goodness it was City Hospital and not St. Pauls!! 

In my defence, NO ONE TOLD ME it was at City Hospital!? Most of our visits to the hospital have been to RUH and I HAD thought about confirming, but Amanda had texted earlier in the day and had mentioned using the uSask wifi... why would they have uSask wifi at any hospital other than the UNIVERSITY hospital!? 

So this got finished up at home later on... 

There has been a lot of TV watching over the last few days while Morgan is at home recovering and I did a couple sketches on Sunday while Amanda was watching with us... 

One in the new sketchbook... 

and one in the small sketchbook of just Amanda... (Although Morgan does appear in the background of a few of the drawings!) 

I've been messing around with using a combination of markers and watercolours to colour some of these... 

Sketches from Carcassonne

Amanda and I were in Europe for a good chunk of June and the first bit of July. 

I had hoped to do a lot of drawing there. I did some. Not as much as I'd hoped...

I took a lot of pictures and will probably do more drawing from those pictures now that we are home. Eventually I'll get around to sharing them here. Maybe. 

These are a few sketches I did in Carcassonne. 

(There are others I did in the castle I'll share at some point!) 

Both of these were on Pont Neuf where we were waiting for the Tour de France riders to roll by at the beginning of Stage Four of the 2026 Tour de France. We were there really early, as I had expected a lot of people might want to hang out here to take pictures.. so I had a lot of time to draw - while standing around in the +38°C heat!! 

THIS is the reason why - from Pont Neuf there was a pretty great view of the castle of Carcassonne! 

So I could end up with shots like...

This is one of my favourites. In that line in the foreground, on the left in yellow is the current race leader #1 Tadej Pogačar, who had won the tour the previous year and won it again this year! On the other end of the line is #32 Derek Gee-West - the sole Canadian riding in the Tour this year! 

If they look like they're out for a chill, casual ride... it's because they are. This was part of the Depart Fictif - where they rolled through town past all the crowds and sites... the ACTUAL start of the stage was a few kilometres outside of town. it was already +38°C when they rolled by and expected to be +40°C as the day went on, so there was no need to do more than what was necessary to get them to the start! 

This veiw is looking the other way down the street, where we would first see the cyclists approaching from. 

Like so...

Both of the sketches were drawn on location, but the colouring with watercolours was done later. 

At some point I'll post some more pics of drawings I've done (and will do...).

AND at some point, I'll probably do a post on the Bike Blog about the carnival that was the depart for the fourth stage of the 2026 Tour de France! (and maybe something about bicycles in Amsterdam and Paris...?). We shall see... 

Sketching in Moose Jaw

I came here to post some more recent doodles and realized I somehow completely forgot to post my pics from Moose Jaw!? At the end of April, Amanda had a chance to travel to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, for a work-related conference at the Temple Gardens Hotel and Spa. She's always wanted to go there and jumped at the opportunity, and I got to tag along. It was a VERY busy conference that kept her busy from 7am to 7pm most days - and all her meals were provided, so I was pretty much left to my own devices. 

When we originally planned the trip, I was figuring it would be warm out, being the END OF APRIL... I had planned on wandering around the town and sitting and drawing things... but then at the beginning of EVERY WEEKEND IN APRIL we had a snow storm!? And the last weekend, just before we travelled, was no different! The snow had melted enough that the travel wasn't terrible on the Sunday, but it was still quite COLD!! 

In the end the first few days I just ventured out for walks, it was too cold to sit too long! 

Tuesday it was above freezing long enough that, in the afternoon, after a long walk, I did sit and try doing one little drawing... 

The Moose Jaw Public Library - which was located in the park across from the hotel - Also, many of the session Amanda was attending were held at the Library. 

I didn't do the colouring until I got back to the hotel... 

The next day it was a degree or two warmer so I got out and did a couple more drawings. 

The first was St. Andrews church, which was part of the United Church of Canada for decades, but apparently was sold to a new congregation (Victory Church?) last summer. it was located across the street from the Public Library. 

This one I also waited to colour back at the hotel... 

The other one was Zion United Church, just a few blocks away... 

This one I didn't get around to colouring until I got home on Thursday... 

All of these drawing were in a smaller (5'x8') Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Art Journal that I started four years ago and then abandoned (or... misplaced...?) I stumbled across it recently and thought I'd try using a smaller sketchbook that I usually use. It doesn't lay as flat as I prefer - like the Handbook watercolour journals made by Speedball that I had been using a few years back - for the Birds of Saskatchetoon). I like the size... but I'd like something that lays flatter and is easier to draw across the two-page spread like I was doing in these pics). 

There were a lot of interesting old buildings in the town that I might have liked to have sat and drawn... 

City Hall. 

Catholic Church. 

Some warehouse with faded advertising on the side. 

Another building downtown.

Some were shut down or empty and boarded up, like this motel

and then there were some odd-looking bodged together atrocities...

like, whatever the fuck is going on here... 

but visually interesting... at least to me!?

I spotted a pair of Northern Flickers in the park on one of my walks... at first I thought it might be a territorial dispute... but after watching them carry on a bit, I think it might have been mating behaviour?!

On the last day, after Amanda was done with her conference, we had a few hours before we had to head home, so we stopped by a few galleries - starting with the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery. 

(Which is also part of the library...)

I liked the show in the gallery. 

The museum was interesting too... 

But this seemed a dubious claim... I mean, the casualty rates in the Great War were very high. I think one in ten of the 600,000 or so Canadians that served, died. To suggest that more than THREE QUARTERS of those that marched away from Moose Jaw never returned, seems a bit off... unless the soldiers of Moose Jaw were the unluckiest bastards that ever lived... or the stupidest...? OR, what seems more likely, many of those that served, survived, but never returned because, having seen OTHER PLACES for the first time in their lives, decided they'd rather stay there than return to Moose Jaw!? 

We also visited a commercial gallery That had a lot of different art from a variety of different artists. I though these were really fun... but I forgot to make note of who the artist was...

They'd made this really cool dice tower out of clay! 

Amanda had suggested getting it... but I've been wanting to make my own for sometime... and I'd still like to do that... (and ideally out of something that wouldn't be so LOUD!)

This was also very cool and, again, Amanda and I pondered it for a moment before realizing we didn't really have any place we could PUT it in our house... 

Anyway. That was Moose Jaw. 

We also soaked in the mineral water pool a few of the evenings we were there. Amanda liked it. I'm not a fan of pools, or being in water in general... but I went along anyway and it wasn't the worst. 

Oh, and there was a fun little game and comic store I went in that just opened last fall. I didn't take any pictures or draw it... or... even buy anything there... but I thought it was a rad little thing to just exist in Moose Jaw! I hope they make a go of it and are there next time, should we ever go again!