EDM Challenge #98: Free choice. Draw anything you like…… well a portrait then.
EDM Challenge
7
Jan 07
Eggs
EDM Challenge #93: Draw an egg carton with or without eggs in it. Here is my version with eggs in it.
4
Jan 07
Noses
EDM Challenge #65: Draw a nose, can be a human’s nose or an animal’s nose. In this case, I drew the noses of my cats.
3
Jan 07
Milner n Illy
My answer to EDM Challenge #48 – something that represents my new year’s resolution. Enjoy the moment, enjoy life. A small plate of milner cheese and a cup of decaf Illy coffee for the evening….mmmmm…..
1
Jan 07
One apple or two
I was planning to use these apples to make apple chips following a recipe from Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeuvres cookbook. However the baking including preparation time needed is about 3 hours. I got demotivated after only reading the recipe and they ended up modeling for me for this particular EDM Challenge (#91).
6
Mar 06
Me
Click to enlarge.
My reflection. I was in the train going home. There was a problem with the train traffic and so I had to take a detour. I had to take the train to Groningen from Duivendrecht and get off in Amersfoort to take a train back to Utrecht. I had to stand the during the whole journey, because the train was really full. Luckily the trip didn’t take as long as I thought. I thought of drawing other people, but I was not in the mood for getting caught or looking for the ‘right’ subject. As I was standing facing the windows, I could clearly see myself. Seeing my own reflection made me think, ‘there, I have found the right subject. I don’t need to look to far’. I couldn’t let the chance slip away. So here is my entry for Everyday Matters Challenge #56 – Self Potrait.
20
Feb 06
Lips-tick
Everyday Matters Challenge #53. Click to enlarge.
A little note: those aren’t my lips. According to the challenge, I now need to journal about speaking out.
Thinking about it, I am more of a thinker than a speaker/writer. I am so bad with words. So I won’t say much.
23
Jan 06
What’s on TV?
Everyday Matters Challenge #51 – Draw your TV and a show playing on it.
Here is our TV. And as usual, on weekdays during daytime there is nothing to watch on Dutch TV channels. All of them broadcast soap operas (as the world turns, the bold & beautiful), home shopping programs, cartoon series (unfortunately series that I don’t like). So when I get to stay home on a weekday, I usually watch Discovery, Animal Planet, and sometimes MTV or National Geographic. However, I watch Animal Planet more than the others. After the x-th show about Ramses II or Tutankhamon (spelling?) on the Discovery channel, I just got tired of them. However, watching Animal Planet is always entertaining. Animals are just so fascinating to watch.
While drawing this challenge, I was watching the ‘Miami Animal Police’ on Animal Planet. My sketch shows one officer Gary who was occupied with his case ‘a potbelly pig’. Whenever I have the time, I watch similar shows on Animal Planet: Animal Cops Houston, Pet Rescue, Wildlife SOS, Emergency Vet, etc. This fascination with animals that I have, makes me wonder at times: May be I should have become a Vet… uhm, may be not. I think I will faint during surgery 
Seeing (too much) blood gives me shaky knees.
Click to enlarge
Black and white version. Pen and ink.
With colors, done in Photoshop.
29
Dec 05
Pirozjki is leaving us …
My cat, Pirozjki, will be leaving us next week Monday. A new year… a new home for her. It is a sad fact for us, but it is unavoidable.
More than half a year ago, we started to notice that her behaviour changed. She is afraid of the other cats, especially of the two ex-males. She rarely plays with the others. She often hides under the unfinished kitchen cabinet, beside the mobile pedestal/trolley in Nor’s office, and the latest favorite place of hers is on or beside the TV (a place where the other cats seldom bother her). She doesn’t seem to understand the word ‘play’ in cat language. When Bac or Joey approaches her, they usually want to play. But she seems to translate that into ‘intimidation’. She growls, gets irritated, runs away, and hides. When Bac gives her a cat hug (Bac’s way of showing play mood, usually to Joey but also to others), Pirozjki’s reply is a growl of ‘go away, you brute!’, ‘you’re suffocating me!’ (Bac is heavier and larger), ‘help! I am being strangled’. But she usually doesn’t hiss and doesn’t give Bac (or other cats who is being a pest) a slap or two in his face, just to show his place. I noticed that Red and Salami do this to him or Joey when they are being annoying. However, Pirozjki is apperently not that assertive. Her rank went down to the bottom of the list in our household about 6 months ago, or so we think. We kept hoping that she would somehow ‘fight’ back, but it is just not happening.
So after waiting for months and seeing that the cat is not getting anymore comfortable, we made a tough final decision last week. We would look for a new home for Pirozjki where she will be the only cat. No more cat hugs or attempts to strangle.
We placed an ad online the day after Christmas. Yesterday a young lady called and wanted to take a look. She came with her mom and liked Pirozjki right at once. We like her too and we think she will give our cat a good home. We will take Pirozjki and all her favorite things monday evening next week to her new home and will take a look at her new environment.
NOTE: This drawing is also an entry for Everyday Matters Challenge #44. Coloured pencils on Moleskine. Please click on image for larger view.
5
Dec 05
On the nightstand
Here is a view of some stuffs I have on my nightstand.
The sketch is done in pen/ink (Rotring XONOX) and color pencils.
16
Nov 05
Skull with toothpick
….struck by lightning. That’s the title given by Nor for this particular work of mine. I am currently in a ‘doom’ period, as he calls it. Then my drawings suddenly acquire ‘doom’ characters and feelings too. Well, you obviously can see why he thinks this one as such.
This is my entry for the Everyday Matters Challenge #39: ‘Draw one of the works of another artist’. I didn’t go to any museum for this challenge, because I don’t have the time right now. So I just drew this from a book. Do you recognize this skull drawing? The original is an oil painting from 1886, by an artist who is not my favorite but very popular in the EDM group. From all this artist’s paintings and drawings, I like this one the best. It just makes me keep smiling, since I find it quite humorous. The title of the painting is actually ‘Schedel met Sigaret’ or ‘Skull of a skeleton with burning cigarette’ . Nor changed it to ‘Skull of a skeleton with toothpick struck by lightning’.
The one above looks very Terminator-ish…
Now this one is more Star Wars-ish, agree?
I may add some cross hatching later. I already marked where the shades and shadows should go anyway.
14
Nov 05
‘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.
6
Nov 05
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.
23
Oct 05
Keys
Everyday Matters Challenge #37
On the train home Friday night and after the miraculous flying bike, I wanted to draw something else. Hmmm… think…Oh yeah, the keys. Then I set up a small temporary ‘studio’ on the train, right where I sat. I had loose drawing paper scattered all over the small table (see the bike I drew previously?); the cheap drawing pad that I had with me decided that it had enough of my rough handling. I set my keys on the table and started drawing. Poor fellow passenger, who sat in front of me. I totally monopolized the table, that there was no space for him to put anything on it. The train journey was just long enough to complete the sketch (only in ink). I added some shadows afterward from memory, and I made sure that I was more awake this time. Just before scanning, I added a bit of wash and color. I used a fountain pen with soluble ink and a red colored pencil for this drawing.
NOTE: Click on image for larger view.
23
Oct 05
Bike (Unfinished)
I originally drew this with a goal in mind, to complete Everyday Matters Challenge #35 (Draw a Bicycle). I did it in a metro on Friday night on the way home. Eventhough I drew it quite fast during the bumpy metro ride, I couldn’t finished the drawing because I had to get off the metro. Then, while waiting for the train to continue my journey home, I added a few elements from memory. Well, it turned out that my memory was not working all right at all that night. I added more mistakes to the original bike drawing, which was not quite right in the first place.
I didn’t realize that I drew the bike straight, while it wasn’t. The front wheel of the bike was resting on a bike rack. So only the back wheel touched the metro’s floor. I was still not aware of this mistake, when I added the shadow and the metro’s window from memory. If I had been more awake, I could have corrected it by placing the window and shadow a bit different. Now the result of my drawing shows that the bike can fly; It floats in the air in a metro…What an amazing bike…
29
Sep 05
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.
25
Sep 05
Best Hunter’s eyes
We watched a program on the Animal Planet this afternoon on “The Most Extreme, Killer Cats”. Here they list the best hunter and most extreme killer among all the cat family/Felidae in the world. We were so curious about which cat would be on top of the list:
#4 is Cougar/mountain lion in North America
#3 is Jaguar in the Amazon
#2 is Leopard in Africa, a very sleek, beautiful and agile animal
#1 is….DOMESTIC CAT.
We couldn’t believe it and we laughed so hard at this. You can imagine why…we have 8 most extreme killers in our house! Ok, statistically it might be right. Domestic cats kill the most (mostly small animals including insects). Their population is the highest in the world among the Felidae. If it is counted that way, well yes they are the most extreme. We just couldn’t stop smiling at the ‘fact’. We feel that we now have to walk really quitely around the house, just in case, you know.
18
Sep 05
6 out of 8
Click to enlarge.
This is an entry for Everyday Matters Challenge #31, a collection. I don’t think that cats can be categorized as a collection, but other things that I “collect” fit other challenges better e.g. books. I really don’t have a unique collection in my house. So I thought, well, I have 8 cats and they are all precious to me…so why not?
What you see is a drawing of 6 out of my 8 cats. The other 2 did not fit on the page of my sketchbook, so I stopped at #6. I did this sketch this afternoon, and as you can see, they were all sleeping in various position. Hey, it now fits the edm challenge better! A collection of cat sleeping positions sketch!
A little about my cats…Gurami and Salami are our very first cats. They are sisters and when we got them we came up with names based on food. We were (and still are) so obsessed with food. Our 1st to 6th cats are regular house cats; they are all females and have names based on food. The 7th and 8th are with pedigree; they are males (not quite anymore) and their names are based on liquor.
1. Gurami – a type of Indonesian fish
2. Salami – the popular Italian sausage
3. Wasabi – the green Japanese horseradish sauce
4. Liekamki (nick: red) – popular brand of Chinese sauces Lee Kum Kee. We changed the spelling for fun and it’s easier for the Vet.
5. Koolrabi (nick: kool) – a type of Dutch root vegetable.
6. Pirojzki – a type sausage bread from Russia/Eastern Europe
7. Bacardi (a ragdoll) – rum
8. Joseph Guy (a maine coon, nick: joey) – cognac
4
Sep 05
A Glass, Vegetables, and a Chair
I decided that today is a good day to catch up with several challenges from the Everyday Matters Group. So here are my entries for challenge #25 (a drinking glass), #26 (vegetables), and #30 (a chair).
17
Aug 05
Hand
A drawing I made during a seminar in which I almost fell asleep halfway. The second half was so boring….zzzz….zzzz. But hey..it’s also an entry for everyday matters challenge #10. During the seminar I suddenly thought of the challenges that I still need to do (if I want to). This is one of them and the seminar really helped me focus..lol. I used the ballpoint pen they gave me and the back of the hard copy of their powerpoint presentation.
26
Jul 05
Sate Ayam Ponorogo
… or Chicken Satay or Kipsate…the best one there is.
Everyday Matters Challenge #12
A couple of weeks ago, when the weather was really great, we ate chicken satay almost everyday for dinner. It is quite easy to make and once you get the meat on the sticks, you can keep them in the fridge for a few days. With or without marinade. Right after we got home from work, we only had to start the grill (gas bbq), took some of the satay sticks out of the fridge (kept the rest there for the next day), grilled it, and voila! They were ready within 5-10 minutes. So easy and relaxing for weekdays cooking. However, I did have to assemble the meat and the sticks in the weekend. It can be time consuming! Here is the recipe if you’d like to try:
Ingredients
- Chicken breast/filet. Cut up into small cubes or long thin slices. (For cubes: the key words here are small and/or thin. This will make it cook faster and tastier than big cubes. Put a maximum of 5 small cubes on 1 bamboo stick. For slices: 1 slice per stick. Slices could be less time consuming than cubes when it comes to the assembling the satay).
- Bamboo sticks for satay, amount as needed
Grill dip saus
- 2 tablespoons sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 tablespoon peanut/corn/sunflower oil
Roll or dip each satay stick in this dip sauce right before grilling. This sauce can also be used as a marinade. When use as a marinade, multiply the amount as needed.
Sauce/condiment
- fresh small chillies as many as how hot you want it to be, cut up in pieces
- shallots, in slices
- a few tablespoons of sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
- 1 teaspoon peanut/corn/sunflower oil
Mix all ingredients together in a small plate. If the condiment is still a bit thick, add a few drops of water to thin it out a bit.
Serve the satay with cooked (jasmine) rice. Add a few drops of the condiment onto the rice, mix it a bit, dip your satay also in the condiment….and Yummmmm!!!! Start eating!!! The shallots and chilli slices are also meant to be eaten, but of course, only if you dare 
. Shallots are probably OK for most people.
Note: The recipe is based on real Indonesian kitchen, authentic Indonesian cuisine. Even we can’t find a restaurant in the Netherlands that serves satay as good as this one. At least not in our opinion.
24
Jul 05
Young grapes
Everyday Matters Challenge #24
As I have mentioned in one of my previous posts, the tree actually belongs to my downstairs neighbor. It does not have enough space to grow horizontally, as in a vineyard. So it decides to grow vertically and raids our balcony. One of the tips has actually reached another balcony, on the other side of our living room. It’s been growing really hard and I believe some parts of it has already reached its maximum length (about 20 m or so from the tree). Those parts are just growing new leaves and branches, but not fruit. The grapes are still unripe and very young. Hans, our neighbor, does not mind if we harvest the grapes hanging on our balcony, when they are ready. Very nice of him. So, Nor enthusiastically takes care of the plant daily. He acts like he really knows about grapes and the tree. Trimming and grooming it. I just hope that he does not overgroom it. Sometimes he’ll says, ‘Wow, it feels like we live in Provence’… Yeah, right! I told him that I needed some grapes for this challenge. So I would need to cut some off the tree. He turned and looked a bit surprised, ‘Are you serious??!!’ Of course not! . So my model is still free, very much alive and hanging from the tree, as you can see. He has about a month or so, before his time is up and then…
21
Jul 05
My Foot!
Finally! I drew my foot last night for Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge (#23). Something terrible happened though…
I did this sketch while I was half laying in bed. I used dip pen and Bruynzeel waterproof ink. I put the ink bottle on my night stand and kept dipping in the pen whenever it ran out of ink. But you can guess already what happened. I was so focused on the drawing and getting more ink, that I was oblivious that the ink dripped on my bed sheet. Right after I finished, I turned around and put back the cap of the ink bottle, then I saw it….Sh#@! I thought. Big blob of black ink on my bed and of course it went through the bed sheet. And another one on the floor…and another one on the nightstand. Grrghhhh!!!! I should have been more careful! I just hope now that it will go away when I put some Bio-Tech on it and then wash it. Never had a waterproof ink drop anywhere. So one plus point: at least a new experience….
Note: Proportion-wise, the foot is just a tad shorter than the real version.
28
Jun 05
Mandolin
An entry for Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge #17.
I didn’t have enough time to finish this Mandolin in one go. I sketched the black ‘n’ white version (using ink) last week, colored the basic yesterday with watercolor/gouache and today I added some tid bit texture using color pencil to loosen it up a bit.
After the first two steps, I thought that it looked rather boring and too rigid. So when I was adding some texture using color pencil, I thought….oh…what the heck…I’ll add some lines here and there as well. I think I somewhat like the ‘after lines’ version than before. They do loosen the drawing and are not very disruptive. I like it, I may have to just loosen up a bit when sketching (or in life).
21
Jun 05
The view from my window
An entry for the Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge #18.
Well, this is what I see from my bedroom window(s). At the moment I was drawing this, my towel was hanging outside. We still haven’t bought a dryer yet, since we are still busy with remodeling. Currently we don’t have a space for a dryer, but oh, how we’d love to have one.
Soon….
Then there is the fire escape ladder. It runs from the top floor to just below our floor. So when there is a fire, the upstairs neighbors will have to climb down ’till our level and then jump to downstair neighbor’s back yard.
The building shown is my GP’s office. Handy to have him so close to our place, but so unfortunate that one can’t never have an appointment within a day or two. We must wait at least a week to be able to see the GP for whatever problems.
This is my x try of using watercolor ‘my way’. I am still too lazy to read a book on watercolor technique. So I keep using ink as the ‘base’ for my sketch, being afraid that if I use pencil then it will look too muddy or something like that. One of these days I’ll use the combination pencil and watercolor and read some books on the technique….
16
Jun 05
Artemide
An entry for the Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge #2.
Nor’s tasklamp is a 2nd hand Artemide. We got it for free from my office last year during the move to a new location. New space, new light fixtures. So the many Artemides that my office had before the move, were given away to the staff. Everyone got at least one lamp to take home. Nice.
16
Jun 05
Shoes
An entry for the Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge #1.
My ‘Kill Bill’ shoes: the yellow Onitsuka Tiger.
I made a mistake in the sketch. The shoe that is half on its side has 2 sorts of hatching: lines and dots. I should have done it only with dots. But I started with lines and realized that it might just look nicer with dots. I did the other half with dots as a test, and I liked it. Then I was just too lazy to start over. It’s not that bad so I just let it be.
7
Jun 05
Ratta and Fret
An entry for Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge #6.
These are Ratta (the rat) and Fret (the ferret). The only things I have at home that fit in the category ‘Toyland/Velveteen Rabbit’.
NOTE: The correct spelling of Ratta requires a small ‘o’ above the first a. I just can’t figure out how to do that in my post with blogger.
6
Jun 05
Watch
An entry for the Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge #8.
I got this watch from my parents back in 2002. Nor has the men’s version. The watch is from Seiko and it is made of stainless steel. So its color is silver. The design is very simple and versatile.
4
Jun 05
What’s in my bag?
This drawing gives an overview of the content of my bag. Besides my mobile, I carry a pouch full of pens, a wallet, and an organizer. My sketchbook is not shown here, but I carry it in my bag as well.
I have the feeling that I have to use less realistic colors. The drawing looks a bit ‘depressive’ because of all that grey. I own so many objects and their color is mostly black. I think that it’s not such a good idea to color drawings in my journal only in black or grey….Depressive….or may be my world is just plain depressive with all those blacks???
This pouch/wallet drawing is also for the Everyday Matters Challengen #8. Sorry, I don’t have a purse.
1
Jun 05
Mobile Phone
This is my current mobile phone and its sock. I drew this for the Everyday Matters Challenge #13, a phone.
27
May 05
The Nail Clipper
My first try on the Everyday Matters Challenge. This is challenge #16. I drew a nail clipper. It’s not exactly a ‘favorite’ tool of mine, but I do use it regularly.