Bibliotheek
The ghost says …
Honestly, I have no idea what he is saying…I was just doodling aimlessly. This is just one of my ‘rambling sketches’. I was inspired by the fact that I have to go to my biology class this evening (first lesson). However the weather outside is not co-operating at all. It is raining hard and very windy. An umbrella will not stand a chance and I do not have a rain coat!! Phhhwwttt!
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.
Oil lamp
An oil lamp which was on the table of Restaurant/Tapas bar Abrikoos (Oude Gracht a/d Werf, Utrecht). We were there Friday evening. The place was packed with people, which was amazing considering that the food was just ok. The serve mix match mediterranean food: tapas + mezze. The place is cozy, but the tapas they served is no way near the tapas of Barcelona. It’s just dutch tapas.
In memoriam
Click to enlarge.
IN MEMORIAM
Likamkie “Red”
15 april 2000 - 19 maart 2006
‘Vreugde en verdriet hebben we gedeeld
Met vreugde hebben we gespeeld
Het verdriet gevoeld en
Samen weg gekroeldWaarheen je ook zal gaan
onze liefde blijft eeuwig bestaan’
Vaarwel, lieve Red. Rust zacht. Wij houden van jou.
(Gedicht door Maria Egas voor de SHCN)
——————————————————————
What we had never thought, has actually happened. This afternoon we lost our sweet cat, Red. She was just 5 years old. She was a healthy cat, very persistent but loving. She always washed our fingers or licked our face. If we tried to push her away, she would insist to stay and keep washing. We thought that she would live to be 20 or at least 15. But… apparently that was not ‘the plan’….
Friday night when we came home, we noticed that she was very absent and quiet. Then we noticed that she was incredibly thin. This we had not noticed before, and it was very unfortunate. I hugged her, tried to play with her, she didn’t react as cheerful as usual. She approached me very slowly and I noticed that she was slightly limping.
Saturday morning we called the vet and made an appointment to go in the afternoon. Before we brought her to the vet, I gave the cats can food. Red still had her appetite, but she was clearly lost her fighting over the mood fierceness. The fact that she still had appetite, made me feel better. But the vet’s diagnose said that her kidneys were failing. We asked for a bloodtest right away. It did confirm the vet’s diagnose. The machine couldn’t even determine how high the value is anymore, because it already passed the maximum value set for the machine. We made a decision to leave Red with the vet for two days. The vet thought that she would get better. They usually do.
Sunday morning, today, we got a called from the vet’s assistant. She needed help from us, because she had to clean Red’s cage. Red was not really cooperating and fiercely hissing at her. Nor laughed when he heard this. I felt happy too. We thought, yay, she’s back and is showing who is the boss. The assistant said that we needed to be there at one o’ clock. I couldn’t wait till I could see Red again. But when we got there, the news that the vet gave us was not the news that I wanted to hear at all. She warned us before we saw Red to mentally prepare ourself. Red’s condition has worsened in the last 30 minutes to one hour before hour arrival. She got a very high fever and seemed to be in a dying state.
Finally, we saw her in her cage. Her body was twitching every few second. I guess, it was the fever. The vet explained again that at that state there was no turning back. I kept calling her name, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes were open, but they didn’t respond. The vet left us alone to let us think and make a decision. The decision came, but it was a tough one. We have decided to put her to sleep. When the vet came back, we told her about it and she offered to take off the IV needle and put Red on a towel so that we could hold her and sit down wit her. We were alone again and we took turn in holding her. I called her name again, did the ‘tick tick’ motion with my fingers which I usually did when she did something naughty and knew that something was off limit. Her tail gave some response. Her eyes blinked several time. I was so happy. I thought I would get her back and could take back our decision. But a few minutes later, she went back to that twitching mode and blank eyed again. We couldn’t stop our tears. We were already crying when the vet was there. We were still crying when the vet was back. We just did not care. The vet finally came with a syringe filled with blue green fluid. She assured me that the fluid also contains enough dose of narcotic beside the main ingredient. It just take a few seconds for it to work, she said. I believed that, I watched enough vet series on Animal Planet so it was nothing new. But now it happened to my own pet that I needed that reassurance. She offered if we would like to give the injection. We both refused. So she did it by puncturing the IV tube with the needle and injected the fluid. We said goodbye to Red again. I was silently praying that she would go to a cat heaven if there is one. Or the rainbow bridge.
Tomorrow, the SHCN will pick up her body from the vet and cremate it privately, separate from other pets. Then they will put Red’s ashes in an urn and deliver it back to the vet, where we can pick it up. We will keep the urn and give Red a final resting place, in our house near our heart.
Going away
Hey! The blog has a new look! That is correct! I finally got fed up with Blogger and decided to use Wordpress. I really like the publishing and editing speed of WP. It also offers more possibilities! I still need to do some tweaking on some parts. If you find things/functions that do not work, please let me know! I really appreciate it!
Added note: If you have subscription to this blog’s feed (atom) via bloglines, you may get an error message when trying to read the feed. Sorry for that! I’ll try to fix that up a.s.a.p.
Click to enlarge.
Now, I can’t finish modifying WP to my complete liking right now, because I am going away. I have an assignment in London for the next two weeks. So, I will not have time to figure out everything before leaving. I’ll be back for the weekend, though. Nor will be so happy to be home alone with the cats 
.
I am leaving on Tuesday, but I already started packing tonight. I began with collecting stuffs that are part of my daily routine and put them in small travel size bottles and pots. I like to travel light. While in London, I hope to make some sketches. I am not sure if I’ll be able to make sketches of the city it self, e.g. streets, architecture, etc., because during day time I’ll be occupied with work. It’s not a vacation (unfortunately!). I’ll see what I can do.
Pink Hyacinth
Drip…drip… drip. I made the flower drip, just as my nose. I know it sounds disgusting. But that is how I feel with this irritating cold. Headache that doesn’t want to go away, leaky nose, itchy eyes, dry throat…I am not going to bore you with this. It is disgusting enough.
Click to enlarge.
More flowers
Trying to fulfill my resolution: draw more plants & flowers. So now, more flowers. Our bouquet of the week.
Click to enlarge.
Red
My cat: Red. The only cat in the house that responds when we call her. Also the most persistent cat when it comes to wanting some attention.
This sketch is done with watercolor pencils. I have mixed feelings about the result. I’m not sure if I like it, but I can’t say that I don’t like it either.
Fresh flowers
I finally manage to take a day off today, after two crazy weeks at work. Last friday, in the afternoon, I thought for a moment that I was even going to pass out. All I could think of was ‘bed’ and ‘home’.
Today what I did was only grocery shopping, went to the pharmacy, and made a few sketches. Nothing too exciting, but it was certainly fulfilling. When you live far away from your work and at times when overtime is required, small activity such as grocery shopping at the neighborhood supermarkt can be totally relaxing. Imagine that!
Click to enlarge.
So I bought some fresh flowers to draw later. At the pharmacy I picked up a bottle of eyedrops and nose spray after requesting a prescription from my doctor. These two are essential at times like now when pollen start floating around. I could sense the pollen on Thursday already, even before I could see them. My eyes started to itch. I started to sneeze a lot. On Saturday, we saw that cars around where we live were covered in a layer of fine lime green dust. So to prevent that my eyes irritation and the sneezing from getting worse, I quickly got a new prescription. This happens to me every year, around winter/spring depending on when the trees decide to produce pollen. Now I am well prepared.
People sketches
I find sketching people can turn out very funny. If I am lucky, my sketches will look pretty close to the real persons. If not, a woman can turn out to look like a man (the long blond haired character, bottom right). It gives me a good feeling that I can laugh at the result.
Click to enlarge.
Ready for a safari?
Clickto enlarge.
When I saw this 4WD, I thought: ‘I just have to sketch this. It is too unique to ignore’. What attracted my attention was its air intake system. (It’s located right beside the windshield). I had never seen such thing. It is an old Land Rover, though. Not really well maintained.
While sketching, an older man passed by and he wanted to see if I was sketching him. Then he wanted to see my other sketches. I let him. He thought I study at the Academy of Art. I told him:’No, it’s just my hobby’. At first he didn’t believe me, but then I insited. Well, that’s the truth anyway.
To London
Happy Holidays everyone! A belated Merry Christmas to those celebrating.
I was very busy at work and at home in the last couple of weeks. Luckily the pressure is over and I hope to spend more time doing some sketches. At work I was busy with…what else? Work, of course. It’s the end of the year and everything needs to be done before everybody is on holiday. Typical. At home, I was busy preparing what to cook for Xmas. We had to do big time grocery shopping and cooking. I even bought some stuffs at the Albert Cuyp Markt in Amsterdam, which I can’t find at the local market near where we live.
Now the sketch below doesn’t really have anything to do with the holiday season. It is the only sketch I made in the last 2 weeks. I had to go to London on 15/12 (afternoon) on business. I flew back the next morning and it was such ashame that I didn’t have any time to sketch anything else. My stay was really short, less than 24 hours. Everything was done in a rush. I think the most enjoyable moment during my trip was when I had a full English Breakfast at the hotel the morning I flew back. That was just so… comforting and satisfying.
I made above sketch during the flight to London Heathrow from Schiphol with British Midland. I started before the boats and harbour (somewhere at the edge of England) were visible, and finished somehow with them on view. The wing of the airplane is too small in comparison to the size of the window.
‘Puur Genieten’
…or “Pure Enjoyment’ it says on the coffee cup. Well, not in the situation I am in at this moment. Pure confusement is more like it. However, drawing this sketch calmed me and the hot chocolate warmed me up on the way home. The sketch shows a coffee cup, but it actually contained hot chocolate. I was afraid if I drank coffee I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. And decaf coffee is no where to be found, except by special coffee bars. People don’t tend to drink decaf here. So just to be on the safe side, I chose hot chocolate.
I think the simple napkin fold can be considered as an entry for the Everyday Matters Challenge #40 ‘Draw something with folds’. It’s simple, but hey, it has folds!
Note: Click to enlarge.
Oude Gracht/Bakkerstraat
Yesterday was a busy day in Utrecht. Sinterklaas was coming to town. I saw a few kids with black painted faces and dressed as Zwarte Piet (black Pete) walked beside their mom to go the event. Other people were already busy shopping for gifts for 5th December. I was busy shopping too. I needed a new coat, had to go to Bigoli (a wonderful store that sells Italian food products), and needed to shop at Toko Centraal (a store that sells asian produce and other products. These two stores carry ingredients for making Pastitsio and ayam Magadip, that I made this weekend.
In between shopping, I stopped to sketch this building on Oude Gracht, on the corner of Bakkerstraat. It was pretty cold to just stand and sketch. The day was quite grey, but luckily it stayed dry.
Toothbrushes
Everyday Matters Challenge #39
These are our tootbrushes and I did two versions of the same drawing using Graphitint: dry and wet. I bought my set (24 pencils in a tin) months ago, but this was the first time I experimented with these pencils.
Graphitint pencils by Derwent are ‘Coloured Soluble Graphite Pencils’. Honestly, I don’t know what makes them any different than regular watercolor pencils. The only thing really obvious to me is that the pencils come only in ‘neutral’ color. No red, blue, or yellow in the set.
This is how it looks without any water added:
I don’t know if I really like the feel of these pencils. They are some what dry (not waxy), and therefore a bit scratchy. I had some trouble doing some details, but that could probably be resolved by sharpening the pencils a bit. When applied dry, the color difference between some pencils was so subtle that I couldn’t really see if it turned out blue or green. They weren’t as vibrant and as obvious as shown on the color code on the other end of the pencils.
Then I applied a bit of water…
Some colors changed; some became very intense, more vibrant. I was surprise how the originally toned down brown turned into bright orangy brown. I had to blot that part a bit with paper towel, in order to make it less bright. The orignally dark blue green (almost black actually) color became surprisingly olive green. I did add a bit of olive green at first (on the dry version), but because I couldn’t see it I stopped. Now I definitely can see it.
Next time I will experiment with these pencils in combination with white paper instead of colored paper. I am interested too see if the result will be any different.
The flight to Barcelona - BCN part 1
Hola! We just came back from our holiday in Barcelona yesterday. We spent 6 nights in BCN to be exact, from Sunday 02/10 to Saturday 08/10. We experience nice and less nice things during our stay. Altogether, it was quite a unique experience. Besides going to Barcelona, we had a chance to visit the monastery on top of the mountain in Montserrat. During these visits I made sketches of what I saw, what I experienced, what I ate… a bit of everything. I will post them in several parts, since they are a bit much to be in one post. Stay tuned!
Day 1 - 02.10.05: the flight
I ‘arranged’ our holiday myself, so we skipped travel agencies. I found out that this way we saved a bit of money (on services, etc), which we could better spend on other things. It certainly needed some patient, but I think it paid off. I booked us a flight with Transavia airline(www.transavia.com), which claimed to offer the best airfare in Holland (at least for flights from Amsterdam). True, it was and is. One drawback to get this airfare was either we flew very early or very late. We chose to fly very early and our neighbor lady kindly offered for her husband to take us to the airport. That was before the husband knew at what time he had to get up the morning we flew to BCN.
The night before the flight we got really nervous about the check-in process. One thing that made Transavia very economical is that passanger can check in via internet, choose their own seat, and print their own boarding pass at home 24 hours before the flight. I think this system is fantastic and I think now that it works really great. It was just our first time to check in this way without going through anybody at the check-in counter in the airport.
That Sunday we had to get up at 3.30 a.m. (including our neighbor too).We left at 4 a.m. and our flight was at 6.20 a.m. I didn’t get much sleep, because I was too excited. It was a bit surreal. At the airport, our fear about the check-in was in the end for nothing. It all went smoothly and we went directly to the gate with our print-out of boarding passes. We passed by queues of people, who had to go through the traditional check-in process, and thought wow, lucky us! We got on the plane, found our seats and enjoy the flight to Barcelona. It took only a bit less than 2 hours from Schiphol airport/Amsterdam. While on the Transavia plane, I made this sketch of the interior. It is slightly different than my usual sketches of public transport (train, tram, or metro).
Click to enlarge.
Autumnal equinox
An entry for the Everyday Matters Challenge #34. Autumnal equinox. I think I like Fall the best. It’s a bit gray and rainy, but it always feels cozy. I know that time moves in constant speed everyday, but somehow it feels like it moves faster in Fall. Probably it has something to do with the fact that the days are shorter. So it is now already the end of September. October is coming this weekend. Before I know it, it’s time again to plan a Thanksgiving dinner in Amsterdam (note: I don’t cook the dinner, but someone else. I just plan, arrange, etc). Then Sinterklaas and his Zwarte piet will be hailed here from Madrid (or was it Turkey? I can’t seem to get this fact right). Time for chocolate letters, yum yum I love dark chocolate letters. It’s amazing that letters such as Q, X, and Z are never sold out. Eating chocolate letters is a good way to wait for Christmas to arrive. After that it will be New Year again and I am so certain that by that time, time will move slower again….at least that’s how I will feel.
08.09 on 08.09
Yes. This is one of the few times I can post a journal entry on the same day as I made it.
Today I am in a touchy feely kind of mood. And because I know that it gets even more annoying. So my sensitivity level is doubled. Anything anyone says made me think like as if there is another meaning behind it. Oh, did she/he mean it? Is that honest? I am so suspicious of everything. (But that is generally how I feel for the last few months. I also feel like I am walking on eggshells..crack..crakk..crakkk..I wish it gone but it won’t) Then today when I was going home something tripled my annoyance. When I was going home, I felt thirsty. I had to catch the train, but I thought I had just enough time to grab a drink. So I went to AH TO GO to get a bottle of Coca Cola Lime. There was a line in front of the cashiers but I gambled anyway that it would be quick. Well it was so unfortunate that when my turn to pay came up, the cashier went to help his colleague beside him. I mumbled about having to catch a train, he only replied ‘one moment’ without even looking. I looked at my watch for the third time, turned around and put back the bottle and ran out to the platform. He saw me running and called out, “Sorry. I can’t do anything about it”. I looked at him angrily and just proceed with running out of the store. I felt like sticking out my middle finger at him, eventhough I understand that he was being helpful to his colleague’s client (another customer of the store). But I just hate to be the victim of slow service.
06.09
I felt like drawing this type of entries again. Threw everything that made a long impression in my memory on that day onto a page without too much thinking. I told my self not too worry (too much) about how it would look, if the colors would work etc etc. Stop thinking, start scribbling. And I enjoyed it very much.
View from my car
There has been a discussion on the Everyday Matters Group about doing some speedy blind contour drawing while being in a car and stopping for a red light. Hmmm…one thing, it is not advised when you are the driver, but it can certainly be done when you are the passenger. That’s what I did this morning. I didn’t do it “blind” nor while waiting for a red light. I did it while we were on the highway going to work. So everything passed by so quickly that I had to start while the object is still in a distance. If I couldn’t finished the sketch after we passed by the object, I had to draw whatever is left from what I could memorized. So they are very quick sketches of 5-10 seconds in ink. I colored the page in the car too, and at home I applied a bit of water with a brush. It was really fun and challenging to do.
Where were these sketches made? Where are these things located?
- Classic windmill on the left is located in Breukelen.
- Classic windmill on the right is located in Vinkeveen.
- We passed by this motorcyclist while approaching Holendrecht
- Modern windmill on the right is located near Holendrecht
- In the bottom middle, is station Amsterdam RAI
- The cranes are located nearby the station.
- The trash containers in the middle are located near the ING House
Yesterday - color version
OK, this is the color version of Yesterday (a post from a few days back). I am actually not sure which one is better. There is something “unsettled” in this color version, which I can’t figure out. May be it’s the use of too many color in too many areas? I don’t know…But it was still very fun to do it!
Click to enlarge.
I’ve been tagged!!
Oh! Oh! I’ve been tagged! By Maggie at Designerm. I had never been tagged before so…. Maggie, can my Five Idiosyncrasies wait for a few more days? Please….
Click to enlarge.
