Splashy New Year!

All the best for the year's to come to you and the ones close to you.

Drawings From The Past

This will be the final post with the last four drawings I made back in 1994 for an exhibition which was going to be held, but never took place. In previous posts I've mentioned the reasons why the exhibition never took place. Because this all took place about 15 years ago, memories can be different from what exactly happened and you get curious about what experienced others , but I lost track of the people who were involved with that project, so I can't check the facts.
Anyway, the top drawing was an interpretation of an typical alley in Leiden, influenced by the work the Dutch illustrator Anton Pieck made. Although you might say that didn't work out.
I also tried to make two drawings of buildings in front of water: always a challenge.

A high level of "Addams Family atmosphere" when I look at them now. The building below is an old part of the city wall, build in the 14th century.

And I'm not sure in what era the buildings of this last drawing were build, but it must be about two hundred years ago. I couldn't find any information about this place, mainly because it's in Rabac, an old village in Croatia.

That's the beauty of an archive: you're surprised when you get a glimps of old work and get curious about when, why and how you've made it.

Going To The Chapel

Back in my hometown there still is a monastery. I made this drawing as part of the exhibition that never took place in 1994. I thought it was a nice building to draw, especially because the village was very expending then. Many houses were build and it looked like the public garden surrounding the place had to make place for a new road and parking places. Luckily that plan never worked out.
During my childhood days I remember seeing nuns walking in our village. My father always used to say: "A nun on the square, brings rain in the air". Of course this was a joke, but sometimes he was right and the day after we saw a nun it started to rain!
Years later my father was frequently asked to play the organ in the monastery's chapel, or, as he sometimes called it: "he had to play with the nuns". A bit naughty, my father isn't he? I remember one day, when I was already adolescent, the organ in the chapel was out of order due to maintenance. My father asked me to help bring in a wooden pipe-organ, owned by a fellow organplayer in our village who was willingly enough to lend out his very expensive pipe-organ for free. All for the good cause, of course. His only demand was that the organ was transported by me. Why, I don't know, I guess because I had a big stationcar at that time. Anyway, everything went well, until we had to bring in the organ into the chapel and my hand got stuck between the organ and the posting of the door. Before I knew it I said something very inappropriate at that time and place and I still can remember the look on the face of the nun who was accompanying us. I'm still very sorry, sister.

Streetview

This weekend we were visiting friends. They have bought a new house (almost two years ago)and finally our diaries matched to see eachother. My friend is captain on the 'Stad Amsterdam', a big ship which is making a world trip right now. The ship has two captain's and every eight weeks they switch, so they can have a sort of familylife with their wife and children. Althought a sailor don't want to stay to long between four walls.
Anyway, as usual it's very hard to think of something original to give as a present for people who moved to a new home. This time I thought it would be nice to make a drawing, frame it and give it as a present. First I wanted to make a drawing of my friend's old town, or ship, but than I thought of Google Streetview. I found out that there were pictures of their little town available on internet. Sadly enough Google didn't have pictures of their street, so I couldn't make a drawing of their new house. But from the other side of the water which flows through their town, Google Streetview had made pictures. I took the angle shown below, although I didn't exactly known which house was theirs. Of course I didn't make a phonecall to check that out.

When we arrived at their place, I suddenly saw that their new home isn't visible from this angle, because of the tree in the foreground, so I didn't draw their house...

Luckily enough they liked the drawing very much and especially the story behind the 'making of'. They had not heard of Google Streetview untill yesterday, but were very surprised and interested in this new tool on the internet.

The Scale Of Things

Most older buildings and houses are much more fun to draw than newer ones. Perhaps because the scale of older buildings are mostly more 'human'. Except maybe in first sight for religious buildings, like cathedrals, churches and The Haya Sofia. But just look at this monastery in Istria. Although it's much bigger than the houses surrounding it, it still has this human-like proportionary in it's arches and squares. Even the tower don't look disproportional. Not that the builders wanted it that way, but purely because it was than technically impossible to build a bigger tower. Perhaps that's a good thought in these uncertain economical times: keep things in proportion, keep a human pace.

Once there was...

It's a pity that most local authorities think that they're doing a great job. For instance putting a mall on the place where this magical villa was situated in my hometown village.
When I was a young boy, I was very impressed by this place. I still remember what the weather was like the first time I saw this house: after the rain had fall and the sun was peeking through some clouds. I've tried to capture this in the drawing.
I had to make the drawing by photograph, because the place was destroyed soon after I had seen it for the first time. The local authorities replaced it by a big, white, square building. Because the village lacked a supermarket... And in the whole village could no other place be found to build it! Truth is, that this villa was situated next to the townhouse and there was a need for officespace, which -of course- could be build neatly above that supermarket. So the village had it's first, big supermarket and the civil servants didn't have to walk far when they had to be in the townhouse. Make sense, don't you think?