Thursday, August 20, 2009

Terrible Yellow Eyes - III



Hurray!
Cory the enterprising founder of the Terrible Yellow Eyes blog has managed to arrange an exhibition at Gallery Nucleus in California. They're going to be showing a selection of work from the site and mine is among it.
Have a look here: http://www.gallerynucleus.com/gallery/exhibition/214
(the picture above is by Cory, go visit him at www.corygodbey.com)

And now, so that this isn't too dry a post, here's the new trailer for Where The Wild Things Are.



Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Oh my!



A while ago I made a drawing inspired by Maurice Sendak's beloved book Where the Wild Things are. That was for the blog Terrible Yellow Eyes. And last week I was inspired to do another. I'd been working on drawings on the computer for days and wanted to take a break and just put some pencil on paper.

Now as you may be aware of Spike Jonze, the director of the brilliant Being John Malkovich, is set to outdo himself with a movie based on the book. As a very wonderful promotion tool he started a blog called We Love You So. It is of course about all things Sendak, but also tons of other interesting stuff. I every now and then take a look there and today I was very much surprised to find my drawing at the top of the page.

When he came to the place

I'm very thankful of course, it's not something you expect. You can see it for yourself here: weloveyouso.com

Friday, August 14, 2009

A book with my name in it!



Ik wil een naam van chocola - II

And the names of lots of other people. I was was asked by Ted van Lieshout, the writer, illustrator and national treasure, to do some illustrations for an anthology of children's poetry he was editing.
I made three in total, you can see them in my portfolio. The one above is my favourite.
The book is available now and you should absolutely go out and get it. If not for me, do it for the poems by Hans Hagen, Linda Vogelesang or Edward van de Vendel. Or for the illustrations by, among others, Gerda Dendooven, Jaap de Vries, Benjamin Leroy, Ingrid Godon, Willem Lagerwaard.
And then there's the cover By Sebastiaan van Doninck.



So, hop to it! Go support the starving illustrators of Holland and Flanders!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Globus Magnificus




This was going to be a long post about this picture, but blogger ate it. But I did this illustration for Boekie boekie in April and I forgot to post it. I think it's one of my favourites,
though I still don't know about that fist.

Globus Magnificus

Friday, August 07, 2009

Goodness

Here is a link you must click on: Here
It's the trailer for the new film by Terry Gilliam, which I hope is enough reason for you to go see it immediately.
If not, it's followed by the trailer for Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox.
That's basically my two favourite filmmakers in one go.

This is going to be a good autumn.

Edit Here's the trailer, embedded and all.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Adventures in Boekie boekie land





This is the third version of an illustration for the cover for the next Boekie boekie. I was approached to do the cover and in my enthusiasm I drew an illustration that would wrap around the front and back.



I based my first version on that sketch, essentially I elaborated on it. The issue was to come out around the time of the national week of children's literature (de kinderboekenweek), the theme of which this year is food. (I have something else coming out around that time which is also all neat and themed) And the Boekie boekie editors said this issue was to be called "Hungry like a wolf". Being a big fan of Red riding hood and wolves in general I was more than happy to do something with that. I have to say though that they always have great stories and ideas to illustrate, so I'm generally very pleased to do something for them.
And I was very content with the way the illustration turned out.



Unfortunately being in Oregon at the time I had forgotten that the back of the last Boekie boekies had been taken up by something which wasn't a cover illustration. So my illustration was to be cut in half: 'or' did I 'want to redo the picture, to make it fit?' So after a load of reshuffling I've now arrived at this new version.
I still like the first version a lot, but I'm pretty chuffed with the new one. It's probably my favourite completely digital thing.
As I was not at home when I made most of it, I lacked a scanner, so going digital was the best option.
Anyway, look for the issue when it comes out in october (I think)