Figure Sketching

De DonderdaGroep is a group of artists who come together every thursday evening in the studio of Willem van Veldhuizen to draw and sketch the human figure after nature. For the Festival of Light in Schiedam they had organized a fantastic drawing class in the style and ambiance of early 20th century Moulin Rouge, that reminesces Toulouse-Lautrec. I had a great time drawing there and worked my color sketching.

Gallery Neptunus

This is the logo I designed for my Gallery Neptunus. Since I and the gallery are both located on the island in the river of Rotterdam, one of the greatest and busiest ports of the world, I depicted the island as the back of a great whale. I myself am to be found inside the belly of the whale, trying to control and steer the whole colossal creature in the direction I envisioned. I like this idea, because, apart from the image of a whale navigating in between huge industrial container ships, in my mind it creates the room to start a serious and steady business, and steer it towards other places and shores.

Tango Sketches

My sketching in color is getting up to speed. When I'm not giving classes in the evening I like to hang out and dance at Cuartito Azul, the place to tango in Rotterdam. They often have live music and give classes almost every day of the week, so there is always a lot to see and draw. Tango itself, but particularly Cuartito Azul has a very nice and special athmosphere, that just lends itself to be drawn or painted. I met some other artists there who also like the idea, so maybe in the near future we'll try to do something more with depicting modern tango.

Rembrandt's Hand

This week I went to Wroclaw in Poland, where Peter Greenaway is shooting a movie about the life of Rembrandt. He asked me to make a number of drawings in the style of Rembrandt to be used in the movie. That was quite a challenge, but a very interesting one, I spent the whole week studying Rembrandts drawings and then drawing everything I saw in the way that he saw things. I was hoping that my hand would actually be filmed and be seen on the big screen, I even had my arms shaven to resemble the arms of the actor who plays Rembrandt. But as often, the time schedule was very charged and in the end there was no time for that, so it's just my drawings that will appear in the movie. It will hopefully be released in 2007. More about Peter Greenaway and his work can be seen at petergreenaway.co.uk