I'm back... post 1, Belgium and the Netherlands!

Had a great time in Europe seeing old friends and meeting new ones, each country fabulous and each event amazingly put together! Thanks to all involved and helping organize everything... especially Carolyn Mooney at Enesco, UK. And thanks to all the collectors who came out to each event, it was a pleasure to meet you all. Here's a few pics with highlights from all the events in Belgium, Netherlands... the UK coming next in a second post! Here I am outside Nexus Six in Belgium. (BTW, that's a picture of the sunrise from my hotel room!) and... that's owner Tom and Nancy Van Gool in their shop with a flattering display case of the WDCC and Grand Jester Busts inside the store. They put on an all day fabulous event! Aside from doing a drawing class we did a sculpting demo where I sculpted a bust of the Beast for the audience. It was really fun, many laughs while I explained my process and told stories of working on the original movie. Oh, and that's Ellen, Tom and Nancy's daughter, walking me in as Elastigirl! Thanks Ellen... she later got a drawing of Marie from the Aristocats and thats her brother Sam with a drawing of Mushu! Thanks to all the family, Amber who took these fabulous pics and Merel for the great butterfly drawings! Oh, and Tom was gracious enough to drive me to Brussels to visit the Cartoon Museum that I so wanted to go... it was fabulous! I recommended it to all my artist friends, what an inspiration seeing all those great original pieces of art work from so many wonderful Belgium artist and characters like Tin Tin, I could've spent three whole days there! And Yup that's Spiderman crawling the walls of a comic book shop in Antwerp called Mekanik, many fun hours spent there!

Lets not forget all the fabulous monuments you see left and right in Europe, here's a shot of one in a prominent street in Antwerp. Thanks to Lucien Slegers and his wife as well for taking care of me while in Belgium! Then I was off to the Netherlands to meet up with my good friend Hans Evert, representative to all the dealers there... we did a five city tour to Scheveningen, Rotterdam, Ijmuiden, Dordrecht and Helmond... thanks Hans for another great tour! Of course what would Holland be without the windmills, there are approximately 3000 left in the country, always a site to see! We went to five city's, did drawings, signings and also another sculpting class. this one in Rotterdam, a bust of Belle at Saskia's Collectors Company. Another fun session and good times... check out the video clip at the end of this post for a fast motion version of the sculpt, thanks to an animator collector who shot the piece unbeknown to me... We had a nice visit with our friend Govert at his shop FiDonc (Good to see you Govert and glad your doing better!) Aside from the windmills the Netherlands is chock full of beautiful canals, shown here is just one of many! That's me with Rea, Marjon and Martin at the Collectors Closet, wonderful people, wonderful store and terrific collectors, always a pleasure to see! We did a fun drawing class at their event... Then the DisneyMagicstore with dear friends Wendy and Koos! What an incredible all day event had there! a boat ride, hijacked by Captain Jack Sparrow, then a great lunch/drawing class in what was a former dungeon, signings, photos sessions and raffle, much fun had by all. Check out all the fun photos of that day on there website here. And last picture is the drawing done for the eBay auction with the winner in Helmond, a drawinf of the winners choosing its of Donald painting a picture of Donald in an Admiral costume. Thank you all again for a great time and wonderful events! Coming next post Castle China in Warwick, UK! Since we started with a sunrise in Antwerp, I though we'd end off with a sunset... this time in Dordrecht...