anregungen

Kuechen: rustikal und modern, tausend Anregungen in Farbe. I wish I could show you the whole book, I've had it for the longest time, but it's starting to grow on me. Every time I look at it, Michiel threatens with divorce. But I think it beats the book he bought yesterday.

hot tin roof

Rejoyce fair readers, for the house is done. This is the last detail I show you. Michiel is packing, our Habseligkeiten will await their new residence in boxes. Right now he is vacuuming Otger's room, with a new 150 dollar vacuum hose. Michiel spent his Saturday morning like all real Canadian family men, at Home Depot.

gadgets

Always strange, seeing my drawings in a layout, months after I made them. I think I rather hear my own recorded voice. I heard my voice last week, come to think of it. My Dutch accent isn't as bad as I thought it was.

My little card board house is almost done, I'm behind on schedule though, it's more work than I anticipated. But it's going to be real pretty. Back to work now, hup.

shopfront

This would be so much more fun if I would have someone to do some house cleaning. I can't complain though, I saw my neighbour blowleaving my driveway.

boris yeltsin

Michelle and Anne both blog about Russian photography today. I've been waiting for an excuse to show this picture, I found it somewhere far away and obscure, no photographer mentioned. So today is Russian photo day.

interior

Not quite as done as I would like it to be, but my hand starts cramping, so I quit. The bottom half still needs a lot of colouring. I am not that fond of pink.

pig sketch

Funny little sketch, I think. It's one of the rooms in the house I'm doing. I have to work fast, I promised to do it in a week. So if you -reader- happen to be the nice man with the Asian accent I just spoke to on the phone who wanted me to do an illustration, sorry sorry sorry if I didn't make much sense. I'm horrible when I'm concentrated, ask my family. And I really am trangled up in work, I am not in the habit of turning stuff down.

model

I'm doing something along these lines. Hope I can get it as nice. There is more where this came from: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (warning: slow website)

projects

My head was so congested that I went for a walk and brought you this nice Canadian maple leaf. I'm doing two projects simultaneously, neither of which is routine. I am not even confident enough to show you, quite unusual.

vijselaar & sixma

Can you imagine the fun of visiting Michiel Vijselaar and Tjarda Sixma in their home? Thousands of toys, thematically filed in dozens of shoe boxes. For ever young, they are. But they finally, finally finally grew up enough to make themselves their long overdue website. Go have fun visiting them. The image above is not even on the site yet, Michiel emailed it to me, it was in last Saturday's Volkskrant. It's about 15 years of commercial television in Holland.

zohar lazar

The Zohar (Hebrew זהר Zohar "Splendor, radiance") is widely considered the most important work of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. It is a mystical commentary on the Torah (five books of Moses), written in medieval Aramaic and medieval Hebrew. It contains a mystical discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, sin, redemption, good and evil, and related topics. Lazar is a Romanian family name, as far as I can tell. This is all the information I can find regarding Zohar Lazar. I found him through Internet Weekly. He works for all the big magazines, I can find dozens and dozens of his illustrations online, but not a word about the man himself. A true mysticist.

dale hale

Peanuts comic books, not the newspaper version. I found the website through Neurastenia. Beautiful covers, but except for the very first one, Charles M. Schulz did not draw the insides of the books. It is even possible that the "signed" covers may not be Schulz either. These issues were produced by a crew of artists working for Schulz and who did advertising artwork for him. The main artist was Dale Hale. Snoopy of course is contemplating Kierkegaard.

Keep visiting Paul Giambarba, he is still posting those magnificent drawings Edward Penfield did in Holland.

royal york

Last night I attended the 50th anniversary dinner of The Netherlands Luncheon Club. Not that I am a member, I am just such a lucky bastard that I get invited to these kinds of things. And I love it, even formal dress can't stop me from accepting such invitations. Hell, I can dress up like anything if I want to. Above three very well known and very nice people from the Toronto Dutch community. We were the odd ones out, the average age last night in the faded (the wine was so bad that my table neighbour and I ran to the bar nextdoor for a beer, in order to prevent permanent brain damage) glory of the Royal York hotel was well over seventy. But they danced the night away on the tunes of the Tribute to Glenn Miller band. I must admit the music was almost too much for me. But the company was fab. I bet you can't begin to imagine the stories these ladies had to tell. They sure are living happily ever after, I can tell you that much.

And now for some wickedness. Here's the Grunberg column the VPRO gids didn't want us to read. He's getting old, Grunberg. Milder and milder.

nootdorp

Last week in Amsterdam, I reveiled to the book people that Tim's house really exists. They were dying to see it, so we used our new toy, the Tonino-Google, and found the photo. I thought we took the picture while committing architectural tourism in the Vinex location Ypenburg in the Summer of 2003, but Michiel's iron memory -and studying maps- told us we must have wandered away from there and ended up in the Koningin Julianastraat in Nootdorp. Though we cannot be completely sure. But the publisher can go rent a bus, invite the NRC editorial staff, and organize an excursion to present a free copy of "het bed van Tim" to the proud owners of Tim's house.

The street definitively needs different lamp posts.

edward penfield

Thanks to Robot Johnny I found Paul Giambarba's brandnew weblog and thanks to Paul I found another Dutch-American illustration link. Edward Penfield was born in New York, but I wouln't be surprised if he were from Dutch descent, he looks very Dutch. And the photographer of his portrait most certainly has a Dutch name. Penfield is known as the originator of the poster in America, especially for Harper's Monthly. After he quit working for Harper's he travelled and published books with sketches of Holland and Spain.

Michele! Do you see the time I posted this entry?!

I am choice of the month in a bookstore in Laren with a merciless digital camera, hurray!

bless me

I caught this horrible cold last week in Amsterdam, which I had to neglect, and now it has started to revenge itself on me. I infected Michiel with it, which is kind of nice, because he didn't go to the office today.

bovenzeeertje

Time to promote a different gouden boekje. Sieb Posthuma's Bovenzeeertje came out together with Tim's Bed. Sieb's drawings are absolutely adorable. They remind me of Steinberg. And although Steinberg never did a little golden book, Het Bovenzeeertje very much breathes little golden book. Chapeau. Sieb and I had a little tete a tete (forgive me for not looking for French accents on this bleeding qwerty keyboard) at the bicycle rack, where we confessed to each other we wouldn't at all mind doing another one. Very nice guy too, Sieb.

storefronts

My publisher asked me to take pictures of typical "little golden books" storefronts. This street looks a lot like the streets in the Yellow Taxi. I took the pictures in London Ontario, I was there yesterday for Thanksgiving. I know a couple more cute stores in Kensington and Roncesvalles, I will go there this afternoon. After I clear away the mess in this house that has been without housewife for over a week, bare with me.

Tim on the train! (click on "gouden boekjes")

And Cockie has bought me on October 8th.

And I am finally for sale at Bol.com. Strangely enough only the Dutch Railways Bookcase containing three classics and me, but a must have nevertheless.

back

Touchdown in Toronto 10.30 this morning. I am quite exhausted, so I am not going to tell you much yet, but I had a fabulous time with -among many others- my hero Paul Steenhuis (photo above). Thank you Joris for taking pictures at the presentation of my gouden boekje, I didn't even think of taking a camera myself!

margaux

I'm in fluid hiding in Amsterdam, I recommend it. The booklaunch was terrific, I think I arranged to go to the Buchmesse in Frankfurt this Wednesday with my newspaper editor, but I'm not sure anymore, I was too drunk. This weekend my two oldest friends and I designed an insanely beautiful CD sleeve. We studied graphic design together some 25 years ago, so we had a ball creatively jam sessioning. But nothing much has changed in 25 years, our design was rejected. Boy are we glad none of us actually became a graphic designer!