Jurjen's world

Here is a little sketch with watercolours. It still isn't true love between watercolours and me, but I'm willing to invest just a little more efforts into our relationship. We'll see.

Anyway have a wonderful 2012 everyone!

A while ago Nita (someone I know from myOpera, but has now moved her cool blog the Army of Rabbits to elsewhere) told me about some project by Pictoplasma: The missing link. The idea was to design a hairy furry character aka Yeti, Sasquatch, or whatever. They are going to use the entries to research how people look to these mysterious creatures and going to present the results in La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris. I have to admit the story about what they actually going to do with it is a bit vague to me. But who cares, I liked the idea to design a hairy character, so I did.

Here is what I came up with:


I drawn the creature with pencil on paper, scanned it and coloured it digitally.

So maybe you are wondering how I came up with the idea of this character. Or maybe not, but still I'm going to tell you! My first thought of a Yeti was that its all hairy and cute, but at the same time it is also a big monster. Like a sweet monster. So I thought it should have some kind of cuteness but also some angriness in it. So I started sketching a bit and playing with some idea's. I came up with something I kind of liked so I made sketch with some more details. But that didn't turn out like I wanted at all. It looked like the guy was covered in leaves instead of hair!


Then I decided to try more straight and long hair, and I created this guy:


And interesting guy, but in fact not what I was looking for. Where is the monster? Where is the cuteness? Both not there. And I wasn't all to happy about the style neither.

After some thinking about my next try in this design, I remembered some sketches I made a while ago of some fox, a 'fierce fox' to be more precise! That fox had quite some hair, so I realized I could perhaps get something out of those sketches. I looked it up, here it is:


You might recognize on the bottom left Taylor Tails from Sonic. That was the inspiration for that Fierce Fox. Altogether there where quite a few things I could use from these sketches on the right. The beard, the angry eyes, the lock of hair at the top. So I decided to continue this way.

However I thought this Yeti should be fatter, and his nose should be more human like, or perhaps monkey like. Why the nose? Because else it kinda looks like a bear or some other animal. I think a Yeti should have more human like features. So that's how I came up with this final character.

Here's another sketch of it, a little bit slimmer. Fatter look better, right?

This one is all traditional pencil on paper.

Altogether I had a lot of fun with this.

I have a little nephew, and the guy has some illustrative books at my parents place. Recently when I was there, I looked in these books and thought the illustration weren't all that impressive. That was when I realized, perhaps I would be able to create such a book. I always criticizes everything I see around, so for a change why not try to do something productive instead. So then I decided to draw a simple children book and see what happens. Of course this will take me forever to finish, not because its so much work, but because I will not work on it that frequent. But that doesn't matter, maybe some day it will get finished and even if I never finish it its still nice to be drawing these images.

Anyway I made the very first start. I thought I make a story about a girl named Lisa, that you will see during the day. She gets out of bed, washing, get dressed, eat breakfast, go with mother to do the groceries, feed the ducks, etc, etc. There is not really a story, just pictures that little kids will recognize, and together with their parents learn the words for those things they see in the book. Anyway, that's the idea.

So the illustrations will look something like this. They will be a little 'dirty' in the way that you will see all the original pencil strokes. That's just my style which I like, so no smooth and sharp lines. I hope you like it


Here are some other sketches which aren't coloured yet:

mama brushing here teeth, and daddy shaving

Lisa taking a leak

And washing her hands

Perhaps you thought you were finally released from me, but this little weed does again return to your spotless garden. Sorry!

Since Christmas has passed, I thought I might be time to post something new here! I have been abandon this place for quite some while now, but I haven't forgotten about it. So here I am again, planning to disturb you all with my irritating comments and posts that you used to know from me. I was actually thinking of collecting stuff here that I find on the internet that inspires me or things I enjoyed watching/reading (although the reading stuff will probably not be frequent ). So this place might kind of become my personal bookmarks. Also I'm sure every now and then I will ventilate my opinion about something that bothers me in the world. Anyway I hope I will stay steadily active on this blog.

For those who wonder, I am fine. There was no reason for my absence, nothing happened. I'm still wondering around this world trying to find my place. All (the few) dates I had resulted in nothing so no excitement there neither.

I did made a painting recently, which I just as well can share with you to add some visual content to this post, here it is:
One-way - oil on canvas 60x80cm
The painting symbolises the mixed emotion of going on a journey. There is excitement and joy for going to new places, but there is also fear and sadness because you leave the safety of your home. The girl goes on a one-way trip which just as well could be life itself. I tried to capture these mixed feelings of excitement in the painting.