The topics were so utterly boring (new tax rules), I think they were really afraid nobody was going to read the article. I think I livened things up enough.
December 2009 Archives
Living dangerously. The art director didn't get back to me because of the holidays, but I had to do the finals because next week is full of new jobs. Pray for me.
There is just no stopping me. And I am the queen of impossible perspective. MC Escher eat your heart out.
This is much harder work than drawing, I am completely beat. And Piffin baked a pecan pie, Otger assures us he appreciates it. I found Piffin's shopping list. Piffin, what is JD? Jack Daniels. Oh right, Jack Daniels. Tomorrow we'll be in the Imax theatre, with funny glasses on. Avatar for his sixteenth birthday. I got a call from school today that he had skipped a class. He had a very creative alibi though. The teacher had announced that she wasn't going to do much this last class before the holidays, so Otger took advantage and attended an extra physics class. Teenagers these days, I tell you.
And done. I think I'll go walk Orbit now, to warm up outside in the beastly cold. Hardly warmer inside, but getting better. Michiel and Piffin closed a big hole in the kitchen ceiling that was more or less working as an open window. I wish it would snow, just freezing cold is no fun.
This will make sense after I add colour tomorrow. Sense is a strange word, it has a double meaining for me. The previous tenants of the house in Rotterdam where Piffin was born were called Sense. Or rather "Sens", but that doesn't matter. The house was permeated with air freshner. It took months before the house smelled more or less normal, but the smell never really disappeared. And still, every time I smell air freshener anywhere, I think, aaah, the Senses.
This will make sense after I add background tomorrow.
And this was my Sunday morning.
I love it when clients come for seconds. Even when it costs me my Saturday, though that shouldn't happen too often. And then a very drunk neighbour drops in to declare me his love. I knew my neighbours like me, but we've got to draw a line somewhere. I'm sure he'll have forgotten all about it tomorrow. I sure hope so anyway.
Sorry about the bad scan, but these are the first pages in a new sketchbook, they don't scan any better. Stan is on the thin part, Laurel on the thick part. How appropriate.
I haven't aged a day, said my ophthalmologist. What a flirt. The Dutch woman I was chatting with in the waiting room (I knew she was Dutch because I heard the Asian receptionists struggle with her name) found the optometrist arrogant, she couldn't stand him. You gotta love the directness of the Dutch, it sticks around for generations. Her husband was fourth generation, his family founded the first Dutch reformed church in North America, in 1905. In a tiny Dutch community in Washington State, that survives to this day. They were going there this Christmas. Can you tell it's an awful long wait in the optometrist's office?
The story must be a variation on Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl. An insurance salesman has to sell his last insurance on Christmas eve. Fortunately he gets to live happily ever after, Andersen's match girl doesn't survive the fairy tale. I am working on three more images for the same story. To be continued. I am not so happily ever after myself, but I'll live. I was tortured by my dentist. First he measures my pockets, three, three, three, four. Three, three, three, two. Three, three, three, three, three, six. After a while he develops a really weird way of pronouncing three. And then he removes my plaque, with a hook. And a kind of cruel enthusiasm. I feel like my jaws are bruised right now, ouch. He's a great dentist though, he does a really good job. I should be nicer.
The pink stamp says W.Duvekot, renter of horses and carriages, Goes.
This one of the pages in l'assiette au beurre that caught my eye. I told you that Michiel found a bound volume of those magazines in his father's house. This issue is from 1903 and about old actresses, Vieilles Actrices. An artist called Camara drew them, and this lady is Yvette Guilbert. She caught my eye because she looks like someone I know, but that's beside the point here. You may think that you don't know Yvette Guilbert, who was apparently already old in 1903. But you do know her! People are not as easily forgotten as you may think. Just put her name in Google images.
Crazy day. Last night my account got suspended, because we missed an invoice. I hate electronic invoicing, I never miss the paper ones that come in the mail. And then I try to pay, but fail because I don't have Michiel's account information. And then the people at my provider are so nice that they unsuspend me until the husband gets home. The husband who just touched down in Detroit. The husband I will meet at the airport later this afternoon after I have seen my optometrist. I don't know how much longer I can carry on drawing, you think there will still be a career for me in music?
I believe that today we are all giving our favourite Ramses Shaffy song. Mine is Sammy, because I remember absolutely not getting what it was about, and that made it a little creepy. I could tell that there was something terribly wrong with Sammy, but I couldn't figure out what. I was six, mind you.
