The Anne Frank House

How deppressing is the Anne Frank house? SO deppressing- seeing Anne's room in particular brings home the fact that she was just a regular teen girl who liked greta garbo, movie mags and pictures of puppies.

Bring me more fish!

These are all drawings from when we had fish and chips in a pub on our second night in Amsterdam.


The ubiquitous dutch shop/restaurant cat. He was more interested in the fish and radiator than he was in us.


Not particularly good likenessess of LIzzie and Kelly.

Going Dutch

So what do I draw on my first visit to the Met since my trip to holland? Old dutch people! These two are an unidentified husband and wife- what I love about northern portraiture is the sense of personality- he definitely comes off as a bit nebbishy, and she has the stolid air of a woman who manages to wear a tea towel on her head without being ridiculous.

Brussels, PART ONE!

Besides waffles, chocolates and frites, Belgium's other great national product is the bande dessinee (drawn strip, literaly) or the comic. Brussels in particular is covered in comic murals and is home to the Belgian Comic Strip Center, which of course we had to visit (and take ridiculous pictures in). One of the striking things about the franco-belgian (Belgium has both dutch and french as the official languages, so the cultural & geographic proximity to france lends itself to an interchange of creators) comics is that it seems to be seen much more as a medium, rather than a genre- here, comics tend to conjure up the idea of superman or batman, with autobio or at least non spandex comics being less mainstream.

I bought a postcard of Beccasine who, according to our friend wikipedia, was the first female protagonist of her own comic back in 1913 & an influence on the later TinTin - she's an amelia bedelia type clumsy maid, and I just think her design is cute.


These are just some cute pages from a comics magazine I bought in the train station- They're fun, and I love that they're stylisticaly different but still valid. The top reminds me of some of the stuff Lucy Knisely does.
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And here's some silly pictures from the museum itself-I have a ton of stuff from brussels, so there'll be some more posts on this soon :D

Voyage au EURODISNEY

Disneyland paris- I don't even know where to start! It was a really bizzare mix of american kitsch and sensory overload, and was actually alot of fun- I managed to get a few quick sketches of the other park go-ers, but there was no one as outrageous looking as I suspect some of the people at the american parks would be.




And here's me and lizzie in the obligatory mouse ear shot- note the tiaras and bedazzling.

Amsterdam Odds and Ends

You're the top, you're the louvre museum

The Louvre, like the Met, is one of the museums you can spend days and days in, and if I ever go back hopefully I can do some more drawing there :D


A Hapsburg princess by Velasquez- the whole family has that face, and one has to wonder what they ACTUALLY looked like, if this is the slightly prettied up portrait convention.

A nice thing about the museum was that there were window seats for chilling and planning what to see next- this is a not so great drawing of lizzie drawing the view outside the window.

Us outside the louvre- we're a perfectly equilateral tourist pyramid :D

Dutch Fruit

A couple more cute cards I bought in amsterdam.

The Rijkmuseum and The Van Gogh Museum

Amsterdam, in addition to all its other various um, famous recreational activities, holds the Rijkmusuem and Van Gogh collections. Awesome eye candy!


Van Gogh's Fishing beach- pretty much what it says on the tin, but its nice to draw something OTHER than portraits, every so often.


Zouave (which I think its a sort of soldier?) by Van Gogh, and Portrait of Young Woman with Rice Powder Tin, by Tolouse Lautrec (the Van Gogh museum was interesting in that it held the work of his contemporaries and friends- Lautrec, Gauguin, etc- in addition to his own paintings). The subject is Suzanne Valadon, Lautrec's girlfriend at the time and a painter in her own right.


I love 17th century dutch portraits- the faces have such character, and how can you not get a kick out of the giant collars & cuffs, frazzled hair and their need to put lace on EVERYTHING? The lady on the left is a Rembrandt, though you wouldn't know it from my drawing :D


This guy was FABULOUS- he had a big red sash, a yellow jacket, the requisite lace, and the pout of a man who'd have a chambermaid just to put his boots on for him. The best part was there was a pendant portrait of his father, in severe black, looking very disapproving of his dandy son. To the right is a nice burgher woman- love the ruff and cap.

Bonjour mon amie!

Hey kids, I'm back! I'm in the process of scanning all my loot and scribblings, so here's some super cute cards I bought in brussels in the meanwhile. More posts soon!

Au Revoir!

I'm off today to amsterdam, paris, brussels and bruges- be back soon with lots of drawings, lots of stories, and plenty of pastries.