I hadn't drawn much more than a glass of water since my last trip more than a year ago and had to go through the painful warm-up phase for the first few days in Amsterdam before the valves open and the ink flowed.
I knew it would be frustrating but still didn't take a few minutes before leaving home to do some coffee shop or out the window throw-aways. However, once on the ground, I had the sense to fall back on some less challenging formats to ease the re-entry. When getting back into the groove, usually block out the sketch with pencil before inking - the progression to "looseness" involves less pencil and finally jumping straight to ink - often standing, not sitting.
Architectural elevations (face on, without perspective) are sort of second nature to me. Start with the outline of the building, then break it into its proportional elements, deciding how much detail to add. A couple of those, followed by a few frustrating perspectives, just to challenge my resolve, then a far less ambitious zoom in of an element - in this case a pollarded olive tree near our table in the outdoor cafe. Adding some paint would have been a good idea, but essentially after all my years of drafting, I'm, at heart, a line guy.
