January 2004 Archives

A very athletic little boy. My own son is a bit different. We were talking about getting enough exercise. He is getting enough exercise: "I walk from my laptop to the crackers and back all the time".

Finally signed the contract today, now I have to do the copyright thing. Looks kind of cool. I'll post-copyright earlier posts as soon as I'm bored :-O

(next day) A soccer ball came to me in my sleep. I'll put it in the lower right. If I get the chance. (Weekends, grrr)

I think I am loosing my shyness about showing sketches. Some people seem to like seeing them so...

The writer requested an inside joke. Now I can't refuse that, can I?

I'm going to spend the rest of the week on simple drawings, gasp. But the Tim book needs a couple of detailed ones, complexity needs variation too.

Since I am considered an interesting sketch blog, I'll post another sketch today. Early, because it seems we are in for a bad storm today with possible power outages, brr. The sketch is red, to make tracing the line drawing easier. Which I have done last night. Today is for colouring, I shoveled enough white stuff already. For a few hours at least.

Even poets read newspapers. I am sorry for my Canadian guests, but I am not going to translate poetry. Yesterday's article is mentioned in the poem. It happened before, Martin Bril once wrote about an article I illustrated. I can't help but think that my drawings make the articles get noticed, ha!

Hey, Robot Johnny thinks I am one of the better (not so strictly) sketchblogs he came across!

Today's paper, thank you Peter for the fast photo. I have uploaded a bigger version too. Titel translation: Can women travel to Mars? Or do they nag too much. I guess there was no room for a second question mark.

This Tim is going to be tiny. Dimensions need variation. I have sketched the room around him too today. But it's friday afternoon and time for some fun. Tobogganing with Arie.

This is a Dutch classic I bought at the Dutch bazaar. The Dutch bazaar is particularly interesting for buying books. More Dutch live in Toronto than in an average city in Holland. And they own a lot of old books. I bought a whole pile of literature from the fifties and sixties. I already finished them all, damn it. This very first version (1958) of Beertje Pippeloentje was illustrated by Wim Bijmoer. He also made lovely lovely illustrations for "The sheep Veronica" which is a poem in 48 quatrains, thank you very much. By the same writer as Beertje's. Strange, both books became famous (very famous) in later versions, illustrated by different artists.

I usually don't blog my newspaper gigs before they're published, but to show you what I can do with a ONE DAY turnaround (brag brag) here she is. E-mail from editor last night, in print this Saturday.

I'll scatter some toys on the floor some other time. Not only on this one.

Great book cover. Book is a little expensive though: $525, and those are US dollars I'm afraid. Maybe this is a reading tip, but I haven't read a single "the cat who" mystery. The one above is the first of the series, introducing prize-winning reporter Jim Qwilleran and his brilliant Siamese cat Koko.

I don't want to go to bed, ever!

If I had to hire an illustrator for a little golden book I would choose Andrew Brandou.

I do it my way, and try to stay within the golden laws. Scary but quite interesting. The window seals should really be seen on white paper, I shouldn't even have to say that.

Drapes and wallpaper in little golden books are often very creatively patterned. I am trying hard to meet the standard!

Look what I found! Visual art by Sylvia Plath. I had never seen that.
You can still watch two beautiful Plath documentaries by Boudewijn Büch, a Dutch writer/jounalist who died some time ago.

I am quite proud of this composition, five heads in a row, ha! This is only a detail, I'm not always giving everything away.
Illustration news in the NYT today.

Real artistic sketches today. Planning which scenes on left, which on right hand pages... How many pages? Do I decide that? No clue, but I have to have some sort of system to work by. Michiel rendered the last Maya scenes I need. And now he's out getting beer, on his bike through the snow. Warm today, only minus eight celsius. T-shirt weather.

It is always quite a surprise what the graphic designers guild can do with a little cutting and pasting. I am so glad I don't have to do that for a living.
This was work for the Vanvan people.

Please visit Otger's blog today, you will see 25 palm pilot portraits of his dad. We put them together for opa's birthday.

I read Lex's comments and I thought he was right, so I tried to combine the good things in the two prior versions. And still I forget the cat.

This week Tintin (Kuifje) celebrates his 75th birthday! Joost Swarte was on the radio, according to him, this inspired Hergé.

See category. I hope Michiel will have a look at the colours...

Hey, mine is not the first little golden book about Tim!

Trying to keep the character in character. Otger is proud of me. This is a sequential entry, remember?

Let's study today!
This one is also fun: SignorMori posts images all day long, Japanese stuff, museum art, anything. Piffin is hooked on this blog.

Every year they send out incredible new year cards. I have been friends with them for over 25 years. They make incredible art, both together and apart. They also work for Holland's second best newspaper :-) And I fail to understand why they still don't have a website. I googled Tjarda and I can't even find one picture! I found a mere one two of Michiel. Such a shame.

Tjarda mailed me, two of her (ancient) works are on the web after all. Look for Sixma.

A potential client asked me to see the illustrations I did on telecommunications I mentioned before. Thought I'd show them to you all. You can see a bigger version here. They are all done with super tight deadlines. The newspaper tends to allow me a night's sleep to reconsider sketches, the ad agency doesn't. Come to think of it, I did a telecommunication piece for the newspaper as well.

Michiel modeled me a chair before I got out of bed this morning. I think that is sweeter than croissants & orange juice. Maybe we can surround ourselves with virtual designer objects. Definitely less snobby than with real ones. Happy new year to all of you by the way.