June 2004 Archives

Joni won't be finished tonight, there's just not enough hours in a day. Never mind, I have so many bloggable treasures waiting in line! Piffin was two when she was looking through an art history book. She found a picture she really liked and started to copy it, in deadly ernest. When she had finished drawing the head, she decided drawing the body was too hard for her, so she told me to do that. Now the challenge. I have searched all our books, and I can't find the picture. It may be Doryphoros, it may be Hermes, but everything I find either has arms, or legs in other directions, or little Dionysosses. And I remember quite clearly that Piffin DEMANDED I'd be accurate, she was striving for perfection like an ancient Greek. So which sculpture is this?

The purpose of posting hopeless sketches is that I force myself to finish the drawing. Blogging is a terrific life structuring phenomenon. Tomorrow this will be all right. Promise.

I found this through Scrubbles, honour where it is due. The 365 days project is a part of Ubu web, interesting enough in itself, mp3's 'till you drop, from Alvin Lucier to Vito Acconci to Marcel Broodthaers, just to name a few. The 365 days project is in the "outsiders" section. Among 364 other hilarious things, you will find this gem by the Willem Breuker Kollektief. Make sure to read the explaining text by Joe Tepperman, scroll to July 8. I always love to blog topics that conjoin Dutch and North American culture, and I am super thrilled I found this one. Joe explains what a CJP is, what a schouwburg is, and even has a go at governmental art subsidies. Willem Breuker on his part is singing (!) in a comical over the top Dutch/American accent, which I would have thought to be completely lost on North American ears. The record sleeve is designed by the one and only Dick Bruna, another North American succes. It was a flexi disc that was distributed at highschools, somewhere in the seventies, to promote the arts to teenagers.

Hahaha, I never knew they were called Spike and Suzy in English. I've always known them as "Suske en Wiske", or even as "Bob et Bobette". I could tell a thousand anecdotes about Spike and Suzy, they are such an important part of my cultural heritage. Piffin even learned to read by consuming a full meter of Spike and Suzy albums. This was in grade three, as her teachers were becoming quite desperate about her reading abilities. She took dozens of them to and from school in a cart, and had half the school population reading during breaks. I guess she needed an audience for learning to read. In 1964 my brothers assembled their own album, by cutting the daily episodes from the newspaper. I remember my father's rage when they did this before he had read the paper. Here's a page with my brother's birthday date on it. What would they have said if they had known their little sister would be able to just put their album in a scanner? I really should make a facsimile version, the original paper has decayed badly.

Sendak created the first dummy for the book in 1956, but set this first version aside because he wasn’t satisfied. He returned to it in 1963, it was a story about horses at the time. Sendak got frustrated, he came to believe he could not draw horses well, and again he put the project away. Four days later he saw the light, and drew "Where the Wild Things Are", this time with the monsters we all know so well.

In het Nederlands.

This topic is so two days ago already, but it was news to me. It is not even his first honorary degree, he got his first one at Princeton, in 1970. I read somewhere (I can't remember where, strange, I'm just too tired, went swimming with the kids and had myself tortured by a physiotherapist, who even made me pull weights in a gym, can you believe that? Now I know why I never take proper care of myself, it just eats up all your time, exercising and stuff, you can't get anything done anymore. No wonder those horrible sporty people are never creative or intelligent or whatever. Do you want to know what this physiotherapist had to say? I am too heavy breasted for my back. Yay! I'm going to buy a staggeringly expensive bra! I'm exhausted, I'm going to bed with a book as soon as I finish writing this post) that it looked like he was made professor at Hogwarts, rather than at St. Andrews. Which triggered my imagination, and I went looking for a creapy professor photo. But I'm afraid my imagination is better than the photo's I found. According to George Harrison, Dylan makes Shakespeare look like Billy Joel. And Leonard Cohen called him "the Picasso of song". Some peer recognition that is. Go visit bobdylan.com. Tons of songs, you can only listen to a minute or so of each, but it's very inspiring, browsing decades of Dylan.

A website with dozens of incredible examples of vintage fabric. Kitchen and food, cats and dogs, love and romance, pinup girls, western themes, florals, polka dots, etcetera, etcetera. I would almost feel like sewing again. I haven't sewn a thing in a long time. I prefer drawing, drawing is so much less crafty. Just a pencil between the brain and the paper.

Today was Otger's last school day. He brought back his things. A page fell out of his Dutch/English dictionary, the most used page.

I have to have some famous Americans in my portfolio. I hope I can make nine, in another block, like the one I have already, with non famous non Americans. Yes, Canadians too, I can draw famous Canadians too. You can make suggestions in the comment box. I could do Neil Young. No, not Céline Dion. Bob Dylan and Madonna (not Canadian, I know) are very drawable. Come on, name me some more.

Frittering or dewdling, not even the thesaurus knows what I am doing whith this sketch. I always fidget around with my sketches, until they are good enough to become a drawing. Feet are always the last things to get right, feet are a pain. Still, I like them.

My late father. What a man!

Making pasta tonight? Pizza? Listen to a full hour of lovely Italian music.
And Michiel shows all the houses we are going to buy in Toronto.

Time to blog an interesting illustrator. So where do I go? I surfed Theispot. What a pain! It looks horrible, it navigates abominably, it doesn't want to go back to the thumbnail grid after visiting a portfolio... Boy, am I glad I don't spend my money there. So I try Altpick. (Don't even mention Portfolios!) Very civilized look, straight forward browsing, and I find a great artist straight away. Autumn Whitehurst, she's in Brooklyn. If you're interested in illustration, read the interviews.

Grand opening night (music and drinks and all of hip Toronto) of the John Körmeling exhibition at the Power Plant. In Utrecht people could drive their own cars onto the ferris wheel, but they couldn't get that insured here. So now there are four brand new Saab's on the wheel, not bad at all. Otger went in twice, he loved it. Second difference: it is said that in Utrecht you had a view over the city from the top of the wheel. In Toronto however... maybe you get to a third of the hight of the harbourfront condo buildings around it. But you do get a lovely view over the lake and the islands. And it's not scary at all, you're in a Saab.

When Piffin was young, I faithfully glued every single photo in photo albums. A first child is so special. Not that Otger was routine. But his photo's ended up in corners and holes. And buying a digital camera is lethal. So Piffin and I decided to take action (her school's over already). She went through half a meter of CD's and made me a folder with all photo's featuring Otger. I selected, put 31 X 4 photo's together and printed, and printed, and printed. Now all we have to do is dig up all the regular photo's in shoe boxes throughout the house. Otger hardly showed any interest by the way, but he will. Some day. Picture above is Otger in 2000.

Keri Smith has the ultimate random fifteen. I don't have an mp3 player. I have a fifteen year old Piffin, and she has one:

rasputina - all tomorrow's parties
marilyn manson - this is the new shit
the nightmare before christmas - what's this?
sevendust - beautiful
HIM - wicked game
blackmore's night - no second chance
thrans siberian orchestra - o holy night
wolfsheim - lovesong
a perfect circle - the nurse who loved me
trans siberian orchestra - carol of the bells
incubus succubus - vampire erotica
pantera - this love
wolfsheim - the sparrows and the nightingales
trans siberian orchestra & metallica - mad russian christmas
paradise lost - erased

You're supposed to put your random fifteen in my comment box now.

I haven't heard back yet on any promo card I sent. Not that I am impatient... I even sent one to the newspaper above, you would say they'd like my style there :-) But I guess they have changed art directors since they hired John H. Striebel in 1923. Those were the days.

Piffin in full regalia. Thank god she doesn't have to wear a school uniform.

And go have a look at tip #196 at allartlog!

And Michiel was a darling tonight, put the portraits in my portfolio.

A time leap of forty years (yesterday could well be 1964). I cannot begin to imagine what the family will look like in another forty years. This is only a sketch by the way. I'll do the nice shading tomorrow.

I saw these chairs on allartlog a while ago, they're gone now, unfortunately. I knew I had them on an old photo, but I didn't find it until today. It's me there, drawing. I have no clue where this picture was taken, probably Italy, but where?

And I found more silhouettes (via k10k). Mark my words, I have spotted a trend. (see two previous posts)

Update: Jeroen mailed me, he put the photo back prominently, together with mine. I can have it pop up here too, of course.

I am an ignorant little shit. I had to hear about Lotte Reiniger from my own husband in yesterday's comment box.

"Lotte Reiniger, when mentioned at all, is most often brushed off in a single sentence noting that she apparently made a feature-length silhouette film in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed; but since that was in Germany, and silhouettes aren't cartoons, Disney still invented the feature-length animated film with Snow White. Anyone who has seen Prince Achmed wouldn't be convinced by this reasoning, but, alas, only a tiny fraction of the people who see Snow White ever get to see any Reiniger film at all."

Her carreer was hampered by the succes of the sound film and the rise of nazism. Lotte and her husband were identified with leftist politics -they were friends with Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill- and had a hard time fleeing Germany. Despite all that, she left an impressive oeuvre, and if you surf around a bit, there's a quite lot to be found.

In case you're wondering what my sudden fascination with silhouettes is all about, I do have a little plan. I rarely start drawings with sketching, thinking is what I do. Preferably in a bath. I want to draw my daughter's portrait. Otger's portrait already has a fairly dramatic shadow, but I want to give Piffin a wild one. She is goth, so I think I will have her shadow strangle her or something. She'll adore it.

These three pictures look very similar, although their how, why, and what, are very different. Similar appearance. Appearing similarity. They are all tributary to Victorian silhouettes, which is an interesting enough theme. Picture on the left is by Koizumi Kishio, a Japanese artist from long ago (okay, so maybe he's not very Victorian). I found him in Scrubbles' newly archived categories. I can't find this particular picture anywhere else. Middle picture is of course Kara Walker, who takes the silhouettes to Tate level. I had to scan Stéphane Bouquet (on the right) from a comic story in a book, as I didn't find what I wanted on his website. Probably many more artists use Victorian silhouettes, but I think these three make an interesting visual rhyme. Marcel van Eeden sometimes draws silhouettes, and I remember a very nice animated tv series. Who can think of more?

I am suddenly an official Canadian top blog! Dear Patricia nominated me, thank youououou. So welcome to all visitors who ended up here through the top blogs website, feel free to browse around. My banner on the Dutch treat website is also in working order I've noticed, so a welcome to the Dutch treat surfers too. What a memorable day, I've even bought myself that fan. I have to wear a ribbon in my hair now, or the fan blows my hair all over the place. I'm glad you can't see me. Picture above is Otger, the ten year old family heir.

Why not try to make sketches pretty? Nothing better to do on this first steaming hot day, I had almost forgotten how hot Toronto can get. The first heat alert and smog warning. A chemical soup that won't stop simmering, I read. I am going to get a fan this year. And put a bucket of ice cubes in front of it, somebody once told me that's what they do in kibbutzim.

Cleaning out studio closets is an excellent way to find long lost treasures. There's a story to these drawings. Approximately six years ago I was invited as a guest illustrator. To do ten unpaid illustrations for a fairly prestigious magazine. Good to build a portfolio, you know how it goes. So I did ten drawings and they were turned down. Which got me furious, since I had been invited as a guest. That's why I sent them the ones above. There had been people in my first drawings, and the editor said I was better at drawing animals, so he got animals :-) Much to my surprise I then got an enthusiastic thank you letter which stated the drawings were going to be published. But not so much to my surprise that didn't happen. Months later another letter arrived. The editor had been somewhat nervously exhausted at the time when he received my dogs and hadn't noticed what they were doing in the drawings. And he still wanted me to do ten illustrations. Because I was so talented, and selling myself short, etc. (I kept all the letters.) So I sat down and drew him ten dancing dogs. And they were published.

Someone hadn't even bothered to flush the toilet. That was when we were looking for rentals. Not so today. Who do they think they're fooling? Putting flowers everywhere, storing their junk at the neighbour's, and borrowing a Volvo to put in the carport? I have never seen so much neatness. Original art was hanging on the walls, believe it or not. I have to ask Valerie (our agent) whether agents have art collections to dress up the properties they're selling. It all made me feel very suspicious, and I was constantly trying to look through the revampment camouflage. Hopeless kitchens with freshly painted yellow walls, of course yellow. Bathrooms suitable for suicide with happy flowery shower curtains. (The one shown above was nice though, despite the yellow and the flowers) I'm almost getting sentimental when I think of the chaos when we first visited the house we live in now, where a lovely little girl was waiting for the Kraft dinner her dad was cooking.

Fiona Smyth opening in the WARC gallery. Oh my. All of us -Otger, Michiel, Piffin, me- were talking to her, and she stayed extremely polite. I think this was the first time in my life I outed myself as a true fan. We concluded we are both famous for our tits, need I say more?

This is a drawing by Tara McPherson, a Los Angeles artist. Very much worth checking out. There is more to her work than hipness, if you look closely. Besides that, I think the girl in this particular drawing looks a bit like Maria. Likeness in portraits is a mysterious affair, it's hard to achieve likeness deliberately, it's something you "recognize" when it appears. That's what erasers are for. You just keep sketching and erasing until you recognize likeness. I read in an interview with Al Hirschfeld that he erased for hours, I was so glad reading that. In artschool they always tried to teach me that erasing was sinful. But it can't be, if the holy Hirschfeld did it.
News of the day: we had a real estate agent visit us! We are so chicken shit scared out of our minds fobic about buying houses, this is going to be a life changing experience. She has us going to two open houses this weekend. A stylishly renovated Victorian home, I guess I'll have to go learn all the eufemisms.

I'm going to make the worst remark possible, just coming from an art gallery opening night. "My little girl can do this too!" In this case it's true. Piffin was eight (which is seven years ago), here's proof: she made it into an interior design magazine. Notwithstanding that, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the gallery show we saw. We saw Rhya's inflatable monsters, but we missed Rhya. I want her to make more monsters and do a solo show with no distracting paintings on the wall. Another artist -I didn't ask her name, so stupid, but I gave her my card, so maybe she'll read this and introduce herself- showed sewn animals like the ones my daughter made. And hilarious puppets on chairs that can drive on remote control - in their underwear!

If I ever have to show "roughs" to an art director. What do you think? Would they predict this when I showed them yesterday's image? I'm not too sure. It's about time someone hires me though, I'm through with all my jobs. I could think of something myself of course, but I really do love the challenge of drawing things people ask me to draw. So ask. I am a Toronto illustrator and I draw for money.

This one has to become really good. This is not just any ballet girl, this is Maria, and she is with the Dutch national ballet. So I feel honoured that she wants me to draw her. Not only because she is a dancer, she plays the guitar too. And she sings, and draws, and she sews!! She can do anything. And she is real sweet on top of all that.