IF - Memories

After I've driven my Citroën GSA for two years, see my previous post on the 6th of June, I decided it was time to buy a driver's car. The car of my choice became an Alfa Romeo Guillietta. It was a bit of a bargain, because the car came from a dealer who had to close his business. I paid € 5000 (more or less $ 5500) for this piece of real Italian car-engineering. Sadly enough it came with the little rust-devil included, but at least it drove like hell. Especially on wet asphalt! Such drifting fun: full throttle around the corner. I remember one corner just out of town in particular which was so much fun to take when it had been raining, that I often went for a drive in the middle of the night just to drift there. With no other traffic around, of course.
But finally I had to bring this car, just like the Citroën, to the scrapeyard too. Now I only have this drawing, some photographs and sweet memories.

Sail

For this week's topic of Illustration Friday I found a good example in my dusty archive. I made two drawings of sailing boats in 1990-1991. I only have this one left. I don't know where the other drawing could possibly be. I kept record of all my drawings then, whether I made them in commission or for my own pleasure or testing out a new technique. But those two drawings never made it to my little notebook. Luckily enough I found this one today.
I remember when making these two drawings I realised that drawing a seascape is very similar to drawing a landscape. I found it even more difficult. Apart of the chosen subject, for example a sailing ship, you have to carefully look how you make the shading and the atmospheric perspective. Especially when you're working with watercolors. There is not much room for errors. One stroke to many and you can start all over again.
Pen and watercolor on 300 grs Canson, 210 x 297 mm.

Poof!

This week's topic of Illustration Friday makes me think about the sound you hear when you ignite the camping cooker.

Cevennes

Just to proof that it's not always raining when I'm having holiday in France...
Another piece I made back in 1993 or 1995. I remember I've had a rather scary moment when I made the sketch for this drawing. As you can see it's a peacefull, tranquille road deep in the heart of the Cevennes. Suddenly I heard a roaring sound, I guessed it was a car engine. On the moment I made that conclusion a big, fat rallyecar appeared around the corner and passed me by without even slowing down. It was a blue Renault, appearently testing out something. Within a blink of an eye the car disappeared around the next corner.
Technique: pen and watercolor on Canson 300 grs.

Canned

This weeks topic of Illustration Friday reminded me of our search during our recent holiday for fresh mushrooms. Although we were camping in France, we just couldn't find fresh mushrooms. Only canned mushrooms. And to top it, we didn't have a can opener in our luggage so I had to use my old armyknife to open the can. Of course that didn't work out well also, I'll spare you the details, so we were glad that our meal at least tasted as it was supposed to be.
And we couldn't find the wine we liked last year so much, either! Not to mention the weather. It was once again a remarkable holiday.

Dummy

One of the (unexpected) advantages of my daytime job is that I can use dummies as sketchbook when they are no longer needed for presentation purposes for soon to be published magazines. I think that there are far to many magazines yet, but that's a totally different issue.
Anyway, above I drew a house which is located in Monschau, an old and pictoresque German city. Sometimes houses or buildings have a certain organic feel to me. For example this building seems to be pushed into the river, although it doesn't want that. I guess we all know that feeling.
I must admit that I made this drawing by photograph. Technique used: ballpoint on glossy magazinepaper.

Website

It took me a while, but almost a year after I opened my website finally it's complete. Not until my recent vacation I knew what to draw for the last remaining page. As you can see it's quite a logical subject for an illustrators website, but sometimes you have to take a distance from it all to get a good view or clue what to do. Helicopterview, piece of mind, or whatever. Vacation can be such a revelation (in many ways...).
Anyway, on the way back home I suddenly had the lumineus idea to draw one of the tools which are used to make pen drawings. To be honest I must say that it was quite a pain in the ass to complete that section on my website, because I had completed the text almost two months ago.
You can see the result of it all here. I hope you like it as much as I do.