Tools: Speculaas Plank

An old Dutch habit during the last months of the year is eating brown spiced biscuits, or speculaas. My father used to bake them a lot during the years he was a baker. Of course, we as his kids didn't let the moments pass we were able to taste the first ones which came out of the oven. Especially the ones which were too dark to be sold in the shop. They tasted the best!
I drew the plank to make a man and woman biscuit as a symbol of the marriage, representing the hope it becomes a fertile and happy commitment.
Pen and watercolor (with the smell of brown spiced biscuits).

Currant bun

Current theme is the currant bun. A very tasty one, I must say. Colour and shape look good. Not all currant buns I know have this shape. Most buns look very pale and have not enough ingredients. That are currant buns made without love and only for the profit. That doesn't last long. I remember I've had a couple of years ago an intense discussion with the manager of the bakery shop here in our village. The shape, taste and looks of their currant buns changed overnight and I said to him that wasn't the right thing to do. They must not try to make the same products a supermarket sell. A bakery has to offer a (better) alternative for the consumer. He totally agreed with me, but said it was a companies decision. So he had nothing to say about it. I found that a weak excuse. Since then I stopped buying currant buns there. I'm still waiting they change their company policy about the buns. Besides that, nobody has to tell me how buns should look like!

Deja Vu

As I was making sketches this week for a drawing I plan to make about different kinds of bread, I had this deja vu of drawings I've made about 15 years ago. My nephew, who owns several bakery-stores, asked me to make drawings for a series of ads he was planning to place in the local newspaper. The drawings were supposed to be used all year round, so I made several different ones. Themes were: Christmas, Eastern, New Years Eve, and so on, and so on. Luckily I've found a print in my archive to share with you, cause the original drawings are long lost. No one knows what happened with them. Maybe they show up at an auction when my work becomes famous...

Not The House Of My Father

Another advantage of cleaning up archives, is the joy of finding drawings which were long time forgotten. For instance the drawing I've made of this cottage in the village I was born. I'm not sure in which year I've made this pendrawing, but it must be around 1994, cause it's made with the same sizes and drawingpaper I used for the drawings I made for the exhibition that never took place (read my previous post).
This cottage stands on the corner of the street where my father was born. His elderly house didn't look a bit of what it looked like when my father lived there, so I choose this house as subject of my artistic needs. The house my father lived in was also in use as a bakery and a little shop. My father started his own bakery when he got married and my uncle inherited the bakery my grandfather started. Over the years the building was reshapen to the demands of modern entrepeneurship and architectural ideas of how a bakeryshop should look like. That is: according to my uncle. That didn't turn out to be a pretty sight, as you might expect.
Luckily my father had some very old sketches in his possession, which were made in the 1930's by his old neighbour. Using these sketches and some old black and white photographs, I've made a coloured pendrawing. This drawing still hangs on the wall above my father's organ, back in my parents house.