Koolrabi 14.05.2006
The pink ink blotch is caused by my sketch on the previous page (the flowers). The ink bled through the paper and I didn’t mind it.
Artis
Another day at another zoo. This time I visited the Amsterdam Zoo (Natura Artis Magistra). Visiting zoos is so much fun.
A type of Egret (Grey Heron?), Ardea cinerea or de blauwe reiger (thanks wikipedia!). Many of them live inside the Artis freely. They come and go when they want and some even have their nests at the zoo.
Same bird, slightly different build.
Other visitors at the zoo were looking at the lions who were busy eating their lunch.
Three cubs were born last year. This one stole a chunk of cow rib from one of the adult lionesses. She was lucky that she got away without getting any slap.
Diergaarde Blijdorp
I am having several days off and went to the Rotterdam Zoo (Diergaarde Blijdorp) today.
The Bos javanicus javanicus shares her living quarter with her family and a group of Antilope cervicapra.
Giraf/giraffe. One of my favorite animals. They have such lovely gentle eyes with great eye lashes!
Meerkoet
Meerkoet (Fulica atra). One of the residents of the VU Hortus Botanicus. If everything goes well, the birdie family will have seven little ones soon.
04.05.2006
A minus point of this new journal is the thickness. I had trouble scanning my sketches. The thickness caused the shadow on the side of the image (s). Otherwise the new journal is great.
1 year and still going
It is one year ago that I picked up drawing/sketching (again). Since then I’ve been drawing pretty regularly. So let’s see what I have done so far.
I think that I am doing pretty good so far. There have been times where I was really productive or really lazy and being uninspired by anything. I have promised myself several times that I would draw every single day. Well, I found out that that one promise is really a tough one to keep. I am still not able to fulfill that promise. However an easier approach is to not blog everyday (to post drawing) and use the time to draw instead. I find this approach gets me a lot closer to achieving the goal ‘draw each day’. So that is the reason why I upload my drawings only on Sundays now. I give the post the same date as when I do my drawing. I safe so much time to draw more or do other things, which is really great.
Within one year, I filled about 4.5 sketchbooks/journals with bad and good drawings/sketches. Filling in every single journal page with a ‘good’ sketch is very hard for me to achieve at least at this moment. However I do notice that I am getting better at sizing my subjects and therefore I lately get them right on the page the first time. I also notice that the smaller the sketch book (e.g. that journal with the medieval Utrecht map on the cover) the harder it is for me to get the scale of my drawing right. I almost always miscalculated the size of my subject and the size of the paper.
I notice that my style is looser. I like that a lot. However, I often have difficulties in finding what to draw, eventhough there are actually many possibilities. That I hope/want to change in the coming year.
I have been playing with various medium. But so far, I haven’t used acrylic and oil. I think I’ll try to use them this year.
Composition is something that I have to study this year as well. I usually don’t think about composition when I am drawing something. It’s just usually trying to get whatever I see in front of me on the paper. Often, I am not very satisfied with how my drawings turn out, eventhough the drawing itself is good. Paying more attention to composition will help, I think.
Back to sketchbooks, photo above shows the sketchbooks filled with drawings from the past year. Only one of the spiral bound is half filled. It is only filled with my sketchcrawl and vacation sketches. I keep that sketchbook as my ’side’ sketchbook.
Below is a photo of a new journal, which I am going to use starting tomorrow.
I am threatening my new journal to co-operate here. 
And I hope it will.
