illustration friday: stripes

dogs in striped pyjama's

illustration friday: scary

So there it is... I don't like this drawing at all. The reason is that I hate to admit that I can be scary. I'm not angry, mean, ugly, unfair, impatient, furious, out of control... but I am!, and that's scary.

illustration friday: fuel

When you keep your red wrigglers happy, that is feed them peelings from veggies and fruit, coffeegrounds, garden waste, dead leaves, straw and some nice steamy horseshit for dessert, they will give you the nicest compost in return: fuel for everything that grows. So let autumn do his job, let all the dead organic material rest where it falls. Let blowers and rake untouched, let the worms, bacteriae, fungi, amoebes, microbes and all the small unseen workers in the ground do their job. They make fuel for the earth.

illustration friday: scattered

Books lay scattered on the skyblue floor, almost floating. Luckily there were lots of hardworking  bookkeepers who kept them together. Sort of.

illustration friday: contraption

This contraption I invented for autumn play. It's specially designed for racing through heaps of dry, crispy  leaves.  To hear the rustle and crackle, to feel the twirl around you, to be in the whoosh of a brown, orange, yellow tornado.

illustration friday: hibernate

The words of Anais Nin are so true. It's what I do all the time. I'm busy all day with cleaning and shopping and playing and nursing and walking the dogs, and cooking and feeding and eating and gardening and when it's time to go to bed I say to myself: That was another busy day. And then I think: But there is one thing I didn't do and that's painting and that's the thing I really like to do, but I don't do it and don't know why there are allways so many others things that are in the way, and just before I close my eyes I say: Tomorrow I start painting. Tomorrow...

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

illustration friday: ferocious

The battle for the cabbage:
us against hordes of ferocious caterpillars

illustration friday: mesmerizing

illustration friday: boundaries

Some boundaries you just have to accept

illustration friday: mysterious 2x

                                                             

The mysterious cycle of life: the sadness of saying farewell to a life departing in the dark unknown, and then all of a sudden there are fresh green sprouts. My heart jumps with excitement when I feel the enormous power of life. Where does it go and where does it come from?

illustration friday: disguise

Tada! This is me without my adult-disguise, accompanied by my two friends. They are still in their big-black-wolf and sweet-sheepish-doggy-disguises. Underneath, he is a soft, eager beaver and she a fierce little tigress. We are the stars in a new story in progress, so this drawing is for fun and play and exercise.

illustration friday: influence

garden without a father

This is a small painting/drawing about my father who died last year.  I think about him a lot, specially while I work in my pea patch. He showed me how wonderful nature is. I think that's influence.