Where man has Oregone before

Painted Hills, originally uploaded by groene_inkt.

I'm in Oregon at the moment, have been for three weeks actually, and will be for another three. Things are grand, I'm very busy with a new book for Pica (and there's no end in sight in terms of illustratin').
The weekends are free for traveling though, two weeks ago we went to the desert and saw the painted hills.
Go to the Flickr for more pictures.

(and from the title of this post I guess you can deduce what film I saw last)

Catching up - part 2

These came a while ago, it's the book I illustrated last year.
You can see the first few pages here
Sadly you can't get the book in stores, as it's part of a series distributed to schools and such. But you can order it here) from the publisher's site.

(So much for this being an ad-free site)

tantastic tanuki

Croptastic

Html is hard, I know. You could even call it labyrinthine,
but anyway to get to the point. I made this drawing recently for the ecometro blog of B., and it's been accidentally cropped.
So I'm posting it here, so you can see what it's supposed to look like.
And of course to tell you to head over to Green to the last bite and read some of B.'informative pieces about seasonal fruits and vegetables and her excellent recipes.

The rest of them

Diaghilev's grave! Kind of dissapointing isn't it?

And he loses the popularity contest to Stravinsky.

Though both are outdone in terms of grandeur.

Actually, italians being prissy as they are, taking pictures was forbidden.
And anyone caught doing so would be handed over to the 'competent' authorities.
Which is probably the most intimidating thing I've read on a sign ever.


Venice reminded me of Gormenghast here and there.










I love medieval capitals, so often they're like little picturebooks. The Doge's palace has some great ones. The twisting branches here are great.




Apparently Venice had one of the biggest Armenian communities in Europe.









And of course....

Yum

Yesterday I went to see Efterklang play in the park here in Groningen, together with the lovely and affable Pyhai and friends.
We saw them on stage, making great waves of music and generally amazing the crowd with their awesome musical playfulness.
Something they earleir showed on a much smaller scale when they performed acoustically in a tiny cosy container for a smaller crowd, we just happened to be in. (Actually, nerds as we were, we were in the cue ten minutes before there was a cue).
I made a video of one of the songs then, with all of us clapping and stomping our feet along. Which is currently being uploaded to youtube. It doesn't do justice though to the mood they whipped up, and it doesn't show them banging the walls and ceiling with drumsticks, or playing on a winebottle and jugs and breaking said jugs,
but I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, here's a little drawing inspired by the costumes they wore on stage (a kind of gay Edwardian superhero look, or if you want to be nicer, they looked like kids dressing up), and the wonderful album art by the superb Danish design duo Hvass & Hannibal

Monkeybusiness