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Monday 17 July 2017

Wedding bells

A friend of mine got married in June, so as a wedding present I thought I would document the day through sketches.

Knowing that I would probably not have time to sketch the building on the big day, I had gone there a few weeks earlier to make sure to add it to my reportage.


Equipped with my custom made concertina sketchbook, the first subject that immediately caught my eye as guests arrived was my friends' daughter in her cute pink outfit, on her cute pink tricycle with pink balloons in her hand. She looked adorable and almost stole the show from the bride away.

But this day was a family day anyway, and you could feel it at every moment. Hundreds of photos were taken before the ceremony started, among my favourite seeing the happy couple with their girl together.


The ceremony was short and held by a civil servant who knew the couple, followed by drinks on the town hall's small private terrace.

Toy goats were distributed to the couple's older siblings, a Luxembourg tradition when the younger siblings get married before the older ones. I have actually been to weddings where live goats were present. Always a funny moment.


The party of invited guests was very small, literally only family plus one friend - me, which felt like a real privilege.


The food was delicious and we ate so much that it almost felt like a Portuguese family gathering. I hadn't felt so stuffed for a while. It was hard to put the fork down, haha.


I wasn't sure I would manage to fill the sketchbook, but in the end I didn't even have enough pages to document everything I wanted. Just barely enough space to squeeze in the wedding cake and capture a cute scene where the bride's bouquet lay next to her daughter's cute kitty purse.

 

This was probably one of the nicest weddings I have attended so far. Maybe because the group was so small, maybe because everything was delicious, and assuredly because it was a very special friend's special day.

Thursday 6 July 2017

Celebrating Luxembourg's industrial past at the Fête des Hauts Fourneaux


For this month's sketchcrawl we decided to head to Belval again, in the South of the country. The site of the old blast furnace was open to visitors for their annual "Fête des Hauts Fourneaux".

I always find this location very impressive, but seeing it come alive with activities and music made it all the more interesting.


Inside the blast furnace, a group of men were demonstrating how it used to work on a miniature model. Their protective gear with their silver outfits, thick gloves and big helmets reminded me of a sci-fi movie.


It was very impressive to see molten metal come out of the pipe at regular intervals, reminding everyone that the protective gear was indeed essential for this task.


It's hard to believe that Luxembourg's economy once rested entirely on metallurgy. Witnessing such demonstrations is essential not to forget that past.

After a while, due to the wet and slightly cold atmosphere outside, some of us found refuge at a neighbouring café for a pleasant session of drinking, drawing and chatting.