Richard Gerstl

From my current sketchbook. Probing new ideas for a future story. Perhaps some of them will eventually hatch. Also, a caricature of Richard Gerstl appeared. A tragic Viennese painter who committed suicide after a failed affair with Mathilde Schoenberg, wife of the famous avantgarde composer Arnold Schoenberg (whom he has been giving painting lessons). Good painter, btw, and I feel a little bit guilty of making fun of him.  Interestingly, he had been taught by the very conservative Christian Griepenkerl (a delightful name) who had also been giving Egon Schiele a similarly hard time - and who rejected Adolf Hitler from entering art school. That is three strikes!

 

Sketchbook #90

Started a new sketchbook. Number 90. 'Argh! Just when we were winning!'

 

Live music in The Golden Glove

Page from my upcoming book. I could not resist the reference to The Golden Glove by Fatih Akin. (If you haven't seen it, it's about the grimiest bar in post-war West-Germany)

 

Behold the daughters of the firmament

From my latest sketchbook. Found a chest with Ecoline watercolours again that was gethering dust in a corner. I used to use those in the past. They're too bright to my current taste, but in a sketchbook you don't set any rules for yourself and I kind of like the purple sky that came out of this.

 

Sketchbook 89

The front of sketchbook 89. White ink on black paper.
 

Funshopping

My heroine Pola Kazoni having reached middle age by now, goes funshopping, but how much fun is that really? Background based on a photo of pre-war Rotterdam.

 

Totem animal

One of the ideas I am working on for a story is how characters should find their totem animal. The earlier on the evolutionary scale, the better. It seems logical for teenagers to have an amphibious totem animal, like frogs or salamanders.
Pola has a leatherback seaturtle as a helper, as shown in this flashback scene that takes place right after book numer 2 POLA ends. The turtle pops up when she is coming of age, so an aquatic reptile makes sense.
In theory, it would be posibble to have a human for a totem animal - but then you are a real idiot. (in the literal sense the ancient Greeks meant it) Well, it is a bit dificult humour so I will have it in the background only.

 

floep

 

Rendezvous at Cafe Bibberkop

 

The Maybe Machine

'The Maybe Machine'. From my sketchbook. I may not use this for a future book, but I am thinking of the amount of random chance a believable story can endure and build some meta humour around that.

 

The Moon

From sketchbook #85. I don't know if i will find a way of using this idea of the moon having the exact same continents as the Earth has. It's good enough, but welding together these Fortean ideas into a structure of a workable story takes a LOT of brainwork. You can't have the madness without the method...

 

New Sketchbook

Painted new characters on the cover of my new sketchbook (#82) My sketches are often in full colour while the finished work is in black & white. I guess that is just me.
 

Hard Times

A winterly scene with street musicians. More new stuff on my new website: https://marcelruijters.wordpress.com/

 

Under the Thumb

'Under the thumb of Sweetwater Communism'. A preliminary drawing of a key scene in my upcoming book, which is set in an imaginary Holland under a communist regime in 1913. The joke of course is that my country is very, very bourgeois and anything remotely resembling a communist takeover has always been out of the question. If there is anything collectivistic about the Dutch, it's the struggle against the seatide and a Protestant work ethic.  I imagine it as a toned-down, jovial kind of surveillance state, based on those values.

 

The Sniff

 

Swoon

 

The discreet charm of the countryside

 

Go for a ride

Cafe Fruytmand

From my sketchbook. In search of new characters.

Sweetwater communism

Holland's battle with the sea imagined under a communist flag. The revolutionary year 1913 will have to be repeated forever.