Glass horse

I finally put the glass horse head on a cherrywood sockle.
We cut down a cherry tree in our garden a few years ago. The wood is now dry enough to use for these kind of things.
The piece is now standing on our window sill.

Steamboat "Kurtz"

Experimenting again. I saw these beautiful textured watercolours by Chih-Wei Lin (Taiwan). And I wanted to see if I could do that as well. So I made a quick drawing on-the-go of a steamboat of the type that was used on the Congo river. Check of my most favourite novels: Heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad. I called the boat "the Kurtz". Obviously.
The drawing was made with chinese ink and drawn with pointed bamboo sticks. Then I applied the watercolour and added some regular transparent hobby glue (water based Acrylic emulsion). And made textures with pighair brushes. I also tried Acrylic ink, but that didn't work (yet).
I am not there, but I already like the effect.

Glass Magpie

My latest glass work. A magpie. With the original sketch.
The piece is finished now, and waiting to go into the oven.
It is an experiment, as I used coloured strips of glass to form the bird. And I used dark colours: blue, red, green glass strips. I am curious how it will look like when the sun shines through.

Multatuli

Amsterdam, on the "Torenbrug" bridge crossing the Singel.
There is a nice statue of Multatuli. The pseudonym of Erik Douwes Dekker, the best Dutch writer of the 19th century. He wrote books about the side-effects of the Dutch colonisation of Indonesia.
We had beautiful weather, and were sitting on a terrace on top of the bridge. The scene was too nice to pass. In retrospect: it probably was the beautiful warm day of 2017.

Amsterdam

I had a very busy week this week. Travelling to Hameln and Magdeburg.
And with my wife a few days in Amsterdam.
We had recordbreaking good weather, unknown for so late in Autumn.
In Amsterdam we were sitting on a terrace on the Rembrandtsplein, when we saw this young woman sitting in the sun enjoying the warmth. Just when I finished she stood up and cycled away, as if she knew I had finished.

A beautiful weekend in autumn

We had a terrific weekend. The temperature was over 25 degrees C, I can't remember an autumn weekend so warm.
Some trees are coloured, but others are still in full green. The hostas in our back garden (the same name in Dutch as in English) have these beautiful colours, ranging from yellow to ochre, green and terracotta. At least those hostas that were not eaten by snails; we had a plague this year. I killed thousands of them (no joke).

And I cant resist to post a picture of my grandson, Jake, as we visited the fair yesterday. He wanted to go into the Merry go round. An immense joy to see his enthusiasm.
 

Lobster

Working on my linework techique.
I used the bamboo stick again. Self cut, out of a deceased pot plant.
I am using a technique that Kiah Kiean used. A friend had a workshop with him in Chicago.
Kiah pours some ink in a small glass jar, and adds some textile (like cotton bandage) to it.
It helps regulating the amount of ink that you take out of the jar.
Still, you have to find out how to work with it: at first clogs of inks get onto the paper, so you always have to figure out which parts can use blotches. Then you draw the greyish lines before the babmboo runs out of ink.
It takes a lot of exercising but is very rewarding.

Las Vegas shooting

Sometimes an image becomes haunting.
This drawing is based on a picture that was featured in the newspapers regarding the Las Vegas shooting on Oct 1st. Three festival visitors trying to escape from the gunfire.
It tells more than pictures of corpses or guns.
I did these kinds of drawings before in 2013, a monthly series called Timeline. Trying out what makes an image work. I might redo it. It has a good learning curve.
This one was made in about 20 minutes.

Olive tree

Olive tree, drawn with Chinese ink and blue-grey acrylic ink. I used self cut bamboo sticks. Based on a drawing of Susan Rudat of some years ago.

Elsloo

Quick lunchtime sketch, made in the village where our office is presently.
It's the backside of a row of old houses, looking over the local graveyard.
The stripes are alternating strands of "Mergel" (Local  yellow sandstone) and red brickwork, it's how they use to build in these parts. 
Took me about 25 minutes to make.

Mission foods Russia

Some years ago I designed a Tortilla plant for Russia, 80km south of Moscow.

It was finally opened last week, and my original artist impression was handed over to the client as  present for the opening during the reception.

Even though I could not be present it is a nice idea that some of my ideas were realized somewhere on the other side of the world.

The towers of Daedalae-12

The living towers of Daedalae-12. An imaginary city on a foreign planet.
More like a doodle leading its own way.
It's always interesting to see where the inspiration came from, at least afterwards.
Anselm Kiefer, Dubuffet, Mieville, Monument Valley.