Pages in color

A while ago I showed some black and white artwork of pages I'm currently doing for Splinters.

Now I am in a cycle of coloring some 40 pages. I do my coloring digitally on my Mac. First in Illustrator and after that I transport the basically colored pages to Photoshop and change them into sepia.

After that I use a filter to give them a more authentic atmosphere. Here are some examples of the part of the book I'm doing right now. When I've finished this cycle I have to draw 60 more pages, and then Book One of Splinters is ready to publish! Hopefully somewhere next year.

Muizentheater

Peter van Dongen is one of my favourite Dutch artists. He's especially known for his two Rampokan books and a lot of illustration-work. But he made his debut in 1990 with Muizentheater, a story about two boys: Daan and Henkie. The two brothers grew up in Amsterdam in the thirties, a period of worldwide crisis. Their father is an alcoholic and their mother earns some extra's with her body. Not an ideal situation for two young boys in their childhood. The younger Daan joins the upcoming Nazi's, the other one, Henk, becomes a cool and hard one. The end of the story is not a happy one.

The artwork is in a very crispy black and white and you can feel the influence of Hergé. Want to find out? Read Muizentheater and don't miss the two Rampokan books!

Interview on Stripelmagazine

In the new edition of the online version of Stripelmagazine there's an interview about the translation of 'Verzamelde Herinneringen' in French and about my new book Splinters.

If you want to read it go to Stripelmagazine. The interview will also appear in the paper version of the magazine later this year.

Souvenirs Perdus

I am very happy and proud to announce that the collection of my first 3 books, Verzamelde Herinneringen, will be translated in French by La Pasteque. La Pasteque is an independant Canadian Publisher from Québec. Québec is the French speaking part of Canada and La Pasteque publish f.i. the books of Michel Rabagliati and Pascal Blanchet in Québec, France and Belgium in the French language.

The title of my book will be Souvenirs Perdus (sounds beautiful...) and will come out next year.

I will do some redesign and make a new cover for this edition. If you want to read the French announcement, please go to the La Pasteque site: www.lapasteque.com

I will keep you informed!

Namesakes

Last week I got an email from Erik de Graaf... From myself? No. 

I think everybody recognizes it, one day you discover that there is somebody with the same name as you have. My name is not so special in Holland, but it's really a coincidence if there lives somebody somewhere who isn't only named the same, but also is born in the same village.

So that email came from another Erik de Graaf, born in the same village as me, but now living somewhere else. He was confrontated with me when he read a review about my books in a newspaper, some years ago and he bought my books.

Now he's doing a series about namesakes on his own weblog and he has written a very kind piece about me. If you want to read it go to his blog: erikdegraaf.blogspot.com

Comic Intendant

Since the 1st of May Holland has a real intendant for comics. Circumstances for Dutch artists are quite difficult nowadays: a small country, dropping book sales and not much possibilities to pre-publish. Comic artists Jean-Marc van Tol and Hanco Kolk have taken several initiatives to draw attention to these problems. One of the results is that the government has appointed a Comic Intendant.

His name is Gert Jan Pos. He's a journalist and translator who will try to improve the circumstances for Dutch Comics and Comic artists in the next years. He talks about some of his plans for the comicg years in the VPRO-gids of this week.

The interview is accompanied by an illustration of Peter van Dongen. And who do we recognize

in the gallery on the wall?

Rabbit Art

I was asked to participate in an exposition called Rabbit Art. The expo was organised by a 'rabbit-lover', called Kim Kamperman. She invited all kind of different artists to make a piece of work about rabbits.

Last friday the expo started and there were shown all kind of different and beautiful creations. The visitors could buy the artworks and the revenues are going to an animal home that cares a lot about rabbits. My creation was one with a little bit of humor in it: I wanted to show the artistic little balls rabbits produce that look very similar to pieces of liquorice.

My work was sold 5 minutes after the expo started...

If you want to visit the exposition and support the rabbits: Gallery Lilys, Weimarstraat 58, Den Haag.

Uncle Cor

My uncle Cor was one of the soldiers who stayed at my grandparents house when the war broke out (He's also playing a role in Splinters). He became my uncle when he married my fathers sister (I wasn't born yet). I loved him very much because he was always joking and also stimulated me to use my drawing-talent. As a matter of fact he could draw quite good himself and learned me, for instance, how to draw a good motorcycle.

You can find an example of one of his practical jokes in the story Spierballen in my first book Verbleekte Herinneringen.

The picture in this post shows my uncle (on the right) while he's building sheds before the war, together with his fellow-soldiers. If you take a look at the picture you see young men (some look almost like movie-stars...) looking curious, self confident and gentle into the camera, not knowing what's going to happen to them.

I got this picture from somebody who has written a book about the history of the small village where my grandparents lived at that time.

Portrait

When I had my exposition at Lilys, André (Lily's brother) has been a great help for me. Especially with arranging my work at the Gallery and by fixing the 3-d objects. Because I am very grateful for that, I have drawn a portrait for him as a little boy. In a way that shows that he was already a drawing-talent in his younger years. 

Pages in black and white

I have written before that mostly I do the different stages of the drawing of Splinters in groups of pages. After that I have done the sketching part of some 40 pages, I start putting the linework in black. For this story I don't use ink, but black conté-pencil. This gives the line-art a more rough and irregular look, that fits more to the character of Splinters than a slick, smooth line.

It is a very detailed kind of work, especially for the small parts of an image. Because the pencils I use are very soft, I have to do a lot of sharpening. I think the store where I buy my art-supplies is quite happy with me... I use a lot of those conté-pencils.

The paper that I use is not smooth, in fact it's watercolour-paper with a nice structure, to give the line-work even more character. 

Kriegspiel

As I've written before, I have always been interested in stories about the Second Worldwar. In my comics-collection I have quite a few books about that period. And always when I visit a comics-store and see a book about the war, I take a look. I thought it would be nice if I share some of the titles I have with you.

I bought Kriegspiel by Arno and Bocquet at the end of the eighties in Paris. It's not really a comic, but more an illustrated story. I was especially impressed by Arno's beautiful drawings. I think they catch the atmosphere of the war in a very strong and emotional way.

The book tells some witness-stories from the Warsaw-ghetto, but also about after-war gangs in Eastern-Europe.

Not only Arno's artwork is fantastic, but also the graphic design of the book fits very well  to the war-period. The book was published first in 1988 by Alpen Publishers and reprinted in 1992 by La Sirene. I think you can only find it on Ebay nowadays.

More illustrations

As I wrote before, sometimes I feel like doing some illustration-work after drawing page after page. Most of the time these drawings are connected to Splinters, the story I'm currently working on. Making an illustration gives the nice feeling of creating something that I can finish quite soon.

I visualize situations that could happen in the story in the future or that are just connected to the Second Worldwar, like the 'spying-scene' above.

It's also an opportunity to explore different techniques. I have done some water color ones and I've made some with colored pencil. In the future I like to try some other techniques like f.i. charcoal and scraper board.

I do most of my illustrations when I'm on holiday or some days off. It gives me the rest to try something else and often I get inspired by the landscape I'm in.