This one is going to be sweet as a poesieplaatje, whet the heck is poesieplaatje in English. Poetry picture? Album of verse picture? I mean this. I am going to take revenge on all the black and white I have to do lately.
December 2005 Archives
I think he has a nice smile. And still three drawings in the pipe line. Which is something I'll have to get used to. Today's portrait is Frank Martinus Arion, a writer from the Antilles. Frank was preceded by Annelies Verbeke from Belgium, and Dutch writer Renate Dorrestein. I will be drawing Dutch literature portraits in the NRC three times a month all through 2006, happy new year!! Authors of Holland, brace yourselves. None of you will escape my pencil. I think my headache is gradually disappearing. And Piffin is cooking a curry tonight. It's all good. Only this poor poor girl was living just streets away from us. Can you imagine? Otger will go to her highschool. Photo's on this blog.
Serious one. Aura's, blind spots. Oversensitive for light, sound, taste, even thoughts. Weird. Have to lay down now.
Left one has the life, right one the detailing. Tomorrow I'll bring life to the right one. I'm getting the hang of doing black and white drawings. And this is even a black person. I'll paint him a bit blacker tomorrow.
Not enough, but I think I am starting to understand this guy's face. I know the sketches don't look like much, but I'll get there. I had to really do this in between everything. Martin and Michele came over to celebrate christmas (yeah right). The chocolate mousse turned out so solid we had to throw it away. Florence Foster Jenkins kept our spirits up though.
Working through christmas. But I am enjoying Willem's christmas too, thanks to Skype. I heard Willem enjoy his champagne and his leg of lamb with Jeremy and Lisa. But Michiel is cooking a very exciting cassoulet as well. He needed some duck to put in it, and this afternoon -god bless China town, always open- he went out to buy one. He came back with a duck that turned out not to be a duck at all, but some other kind of bird. We have no idea what type of bird, it's skin was greyish, almost blueish. I hope it's edible.
Sketch. I finished another one today, and after this one I have to have another one ready before mid next week, one that I haven't even started yet. I'll keep the lonely christmas blog surfers company. Early first week January I have to have one done about erection pills. Don't say anything. On the other hand... I think I may already have an idea, but feel free to admit some of yours. Comment box now open for Viagra/Cialis spam.
It's too early for red wine, the stain just shines through from the previous page. Drawing the likeness of an unwrinkeld and beautiful young woman is not easy, but I think I'm on to her. Thank god she never went to an orthodontist.
Nine of these already: look. It's fun to do series, I wouldn't mind doing more of them. Remind me to write down Piffin's delivery story as well, some time soon. Since you all seemed to like Otger's delivery story so much. And we wouldn't want to get Bianca's hopes up, now would we? Piffin's delivery story is a bloody one. Not today though, I have my laundry waiting. And the grocery shopping. And more drawings.
Postblogging again. I was too stressed out yesterday. I have to do changes to an illustration, but nobody seems to know how. Hard to explain. A whole day of aimless sketching. Today, waiting for the editor to make up his mind, I'll do another piece of parental advice. Very relaxing straight forward little drawings.
Otger is twelve today! Twelve years ago, Stuttgart. The contractions started as I woke up. After breakfast I sent Michiel and Piffin away. Alone, I watched downhill skiing on tv, somehow that worked very well with the contractions. When the contractions grew so severe that I didn't feel comfortable being alone anymore, I called Michiel and Frau Dietrich, the midwife. The midwife was wonderful, already in her sixties, with hundreds of home births behind her. She had only cut about five times in her whole carreer. She told me exactly how and when to turn, move, get up, or lie down, this way making it as easy as possible for Otger to come out. When she saw the tissue become too tight and too light, at the point of tearing, she pressed a towel against it that was soaked with hot coffee. That was enough to make the blood return to the tissue and thus prevent the tearing. Mother and son perfectly undamaged. For desert, she put frozen spinach on my stomach. To prevent bleeding. And I didn't bleed. Not more than expected, that is. And Otger put his thumb in his mouth and went to sleep in his crib. And Michiel read through the whole thing.
I find the image a bit bleak on the page. Can anybody tell me whether it looks better in the paper paper? Here's a bigger and darker version. To work now, decorating the living room, baking cake, birthday! Otger is twelve on Monday, but Saturday is better. He was born 10 days overdue anyway. This is what he's getting.
Yes, that stain is red wine. I started sketching, but I'll leave it alone for the weekend. Somehow every time I walk past our letterbox, there's another invitation to a party inside. All tomorrow night, all in our street. And on top of that we'll celebrate Otger's birthday ourselves! We can dance a conga line through the street, from party to party, that'll be a blast. I'll put on my party dress that makes me look like a papaya. At least that's what one of those neighbours said last time.
I have to do some portraits. I am always very happy when I can find moving pictures of the person I have to draw. Photographs are such frozen moments, often enough they don't even really resemble the person on them. All these screenshots will help me catch the right expression. I hope. The weather is co-operating, it's snowing so hard that staying inside by the fire certainly is the wisest thing to do. I don't have a fire though, just the furnace. With broken humidifier, we're down to 20%. Dry throat, sore eyes, thirsty. The contractor just called, he's stuck in the snowstorm, north of Toronto. I could barely understand him through his cellphone. We'll have to sit out this storm. And draw. With wet towels hanging everywhere.
The newspaper:
"The city is also warning people to purchase any food, medication or household supplies that you might need for the next 48 hours."
I swindled a little with the date of this blog entry. The Alias boys abducted me to the Drake last night. The trendy Drake full of nerds. They're quite normal really, set free in an environment without computers. Talking about their kids, or -depending upon their age- their lack of girlfriend. Somewhere in between those two topics they obviously must be capable of doing some things right. Eating cold left over fries from other customers not being one of them.
The weekly wisdom. This time about making the punishment fit the crime. Kids that get underpunished or overpunished. Horrid, I cannot even remember ever having punished one of my children. It is my deep belief that if you are an amiable parent, you'll have amiable kids. Works so far...
I couldn't really figure out from pictures how and why a grand piano is constructed. So it's part guess work. And then tonight I walk into Marilyn's house, down the street. The exact same grand piano as on the picture I worked from! In her living room! I'll be damned. I need to visit more neighbours.
Very flat and dull, but ready to add the life tomorrow.
Nine of eleven characters done. I have more elements ready, going to put everything together tomorrow. With moonlight sonata's and everything. We amused ourselves with the moonlight sonata today. Downloaded dozens of amateur recordings, totally lovely. This is the best one, with coughing and everything. I am almost tempted to do an animation film to it, I can see it before me when I listen to the music. The recording is horrible, but the piano playing truly beautiful. The horribility of the recording adds to the beauty.
Something like this, but a little Maya magic still to be added.
The only reason I post this, is because I am so open and honest. There's enough time to rescue this one, deadline next week Wednesday. This couple will float up in the air, and stuff will be happening on the ground. So it's the frog perspective struggle. I realise I am doing something foolish, having frog perspective wider on top. My mind just isn't very spatial.
Children are not flower bulbs. That's what this week's column is about. Flower bulbs are artificially made to bloom early, by putting them in the fridge and then when you take them out, they'll think it's spring. Something like that, I don't have a green thumb, I just learned about this today. Now children are also made to bloom early. Reaching their potential in kindergarten, getting tested for everything, victims of ambitious parents and teachers that want all children to be the same. I could write a book about this myself. In Belgium teachers tried to have Otger do his year again twice, but we refused. We wanted him to get the chance to develop at his own pace, but in his age group. Teachers tend to not like that much. Now he's in grade seven, still in his age group, and doing great.
I promised Otger I'd blog his drawing if he would manage to get the page filled. And he did. So I do. Otger has always drawn like this. Cities, factories, campgrounds, mazes, treasure maps, wiring, roads, games, machines... Anything complicated enough, it seems. Sinterklaas brought him a nice new big sketch pad today. And Otger brought home his best report card ever!
Piffin has always been your typical gifted underachieving roller coaster student. And Michiel and I have to watch her on her bumpy ride, up and down, and up and down. And loopings. She made it into grade 12 IB. (Holland has IB schools as well) On probation though, her marks were not good enough in June. Last night parent teacher interviews. Her math and physics teacher: "Piffin is my best student". Boooooowooohaaaa, eight more months to graduation.
-read yesterday first-
Willem did indeed still have the card game, and he did send me some scans. We thank him. The dictionary tells me this particular type of card game is called "happy families" in English, life is full of irony. Traditionally Happy Families is a 44-card deck that features characters from different families: each family is made by a worker (the Baker, the Painter, etc.), his wife, his daughter and his son. Peter Vos used strange creatures instead of families, and devided those in four body parts. The game is played by asking the opponents for cards belonging to specific creatures, so to complete as many sets as possible. Picture above is the schijtlijster, or shit-trush. Also very interesting is the scrotum-bumblebee.
