by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday March 3, 2010
The paper tell me that we have more snow this winter then in the last 30 years.
It started a few days before Christmas. I had taken the last few days for Christmas holidays off of work and that turned out to be a good thing. I never would have been able to reach my work because trains and buses didn’t run.
Luckily the snow was predicted, so I had stocked me cupboards with enough food to reach the first day of Christmas.
For the last 15 years my father and I have created the tradition to eat out on the 26the (we call it second Christmas day). So it didn’t seem necessary to stock for more then a few day. Especially because I was planning to order take out for the Sunday after Christmas.
But with both the weather and the weather forecast getting worse, it didn’t seem very likely the me father and I would have our Christmas dinner.
My father is 79 yrs old and is a little afraid that he might fall and break something. So with the kind of snow that was expected he was thinking of staying at home.
So two days before Christmas I decided that I had to go to the shops and restock my cupboards.
By that time we had 30 cm of snow. Which is a lot for the Netherlands. I can’t even remember ever seeing that much snow in the streets.
Since the last time I cycled on a slippery road I broke my hip I decide to walk.
Going out I expected it to be very cold. But despite the cold I found it to be a very nice day.
There are two routes from my house to the shops. One takes my passed two very slippery bridges and the other takes my along a road filled with dozens of cyclist who don’t take kindly to annoying slow moving pedestrians.
Since I didn’t want to fall and break something it seemed wise to take the latter.
But I found that I wasn’t the only one who had decided that cycling was to hazardous. The road was filled with pedestrians. Mostly middle aged and old folks. The kind of people who usually take the car.
By the tracks in the snow I could see that some cyclist had past.
Looking at those tracks in the snow it felt as though I was traveling through some mountaines moon landscape. It looked far more beautiful then I would have expected.
In hindsight I feel it’s a pity that I didn’t take the time to wander around to admire this winter landscape. But that day I just felt cold and wanted to get my Christmas shopping done as soon as possible so I could return to my warm and cosy home
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Thursday October 2, 2008
Paintings by Hidemi Tada and Rod Buckle and drawings by George Cwirko-Godycki.
Hidemi Tada’s study of old masters
Sometimes I come across site from artist at which they ordered there work in chronological order.
On the first page you’ll find there first painting, on the second page their second and so on. Of course usually you don’t look further then there second or third page because artist hardly ever start out with there most interesting work.
Hidemi Tada ordered the paintings in his Flickr account in the same way. But luckily for us Flickr doesn’t present work that way. You get send to a page were you can get an overview of a set.
Usually I attach great value on my first impression. If I like the colors and the overall feel of the set I’ll pick some picture from the middle of the page to look at. If I like them I start at the start and look at the whole set.
Hidemi Tada is learning how to paint by the old and tested method of copying the masters.
Studying Bouguereau by Hidemi Tada
Rod Buckle’s watercolors
Rod Buckle is also studying to be a painter. He paints lovely watercolors landscapes and cityscapes.
Going by the comments he write under some of his paintings I imagine that he takes a lot of time planning his paintings.
George Cwirko-Godycki’s strange drawings
George Cwirko-Godycki draws a blog. Literally draws a blog in that he doesn’t comment on his drawings. But paging back to the beginning of his blog I found that improving that the goal of his blog is to improve his drawing skills.
His drawings are about as strange as the name of his blog: Common in coastal waters.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday July 31, 2007
Here are some of the art sites I featured on See me draw in the last couple of weeks:
- Wasted beauty is a beautiful site with eerie drawings.
- Julian Beever makes pavement drawings. Large 3d drawings that, from the right angle, look very real.
- Amy Bennet constructed a town using model railroad miniatures, landscaping supplies and dollhouse lighting. From this model she paints pictures of the inside and outside of the houses and the people that could have lived in this town.
- Characterdesign is kind of a showroom for people who ilustate books etc. They also do interviews with their artists.
- Jason Chan draws pictures with an eastern theme.
- Justine Ashbee draws strange wall paintings that remind me of creased cloth and in that have something very familiar.
- Philip Straub paints beautiful book illustrations.
- Does a car dream about becoming a bigger car? Wouldn’t it be nice to shine the light of your flashlight around a corner? On 98pages you find these kind of visual jokes.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Monday July 9, 2007
Here are a few of my favorite drawings:
- Who’s afraid of yellow, red (and blue)
A frightening experience at work helped me to make this drawing
- Tentacles
Thinking about a title instead of a drawing led to a nice drawing with a different title.
- Patched
Sometimes one idea doesn’t work but with trying you get something else that does work
- Nova
After thinking about it for a long time I finally figured out which technique to use to draw this picture
- Apples and pears
A pictured that turned out almost the way I saw it in my mind
- Sailing into the sunset
It’s a strange feeling to draw the background first. You don’t really know what you’ll get.
- Sea edge
Did you notice that the waves are flow away from the beach. Still I love the colors.
- Hard to soft
I love these flowing colors.
- Hunebed
Not perfect but almost the picture I had in my mind.
- Sunset on crooked sea
Very expressive sun, almost a fire.
- Mask
What started out as a study drawing to try a new technique learned me to draw beautiful pictures.
- Intersecting bottles
Reminiscing of old times when the world, or at least my world, was a saver place.
- Joking
The first drawing featuring an eye. I don’t yet know why, but eyes are very important to me.
- Flower
This is the first drawing where I combined colors by layering them on top of each other. That way you can make colors you don’t actually have in your pencil box.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.