Stroopflappen

Or that's what they are called in Dutch, a direct translation would be 'syrup flaps' but I'm doubtful that's correct.

The recipe:

Melt in a pan with medium heat:
- 125 g butter, with
- 4 tablespoons of golden syrup, until the butter has melted.

Add and mix in:
- 225 g of oatmeal (Dutch: havermout),
- 75 g of sugar, and
- a pinch of salt.

Grease a square baking tin of 18 cm (or a 20 cm round one, like I did), or cover with baking paper instead. Pour in the mix and bake 30 to 40 minutes on 170 degrees Celsius. Leave in tin for five minutes, then cut it as it will be too brittle later on. When hardened enough, place on a cooling rack (Dutch: taartrooster). Enjoy!

Day 2

Or actually day 3, part one because I'm, well, let's call it forgetful for now. This time it's vacuum cleaners, because I forgot that too.

Day 1

To start off, a few sketches in a train that probably attempted to dance the Macarena, or at least it felt that way with all the shaking. My pen even fell down. Whoa.

A drawing a day

Because... well, practise makes everything better. Right? And it's fun to boot. And, I could use some skill improvement. And a stimulus to keep going. 'Cause I really need to practise. Really.

Although my drawing lessons at school were very educative and useful, I've noticed that a) to get good at drawing I need to draw way more often, and b) even a few months after the course had finished my skills have already begun to decrease.

So, the challenge. Draw. Every day.
That's it. Oh, and I'm not allowed to whine about drawings that suck. Ánd I'll need to post things end of each day. It is always nice to see your own progress, and I'll need a bit of an incentive to start each day. Probably.

To keep you from getting bored from all my doodles, I'm posting my drawings on a separate page: A Drawing A Day. Feel free to ignore it at your own discretion.

Until when will I do this? Prooooobably until the next deadline period comes along. Like, next week or so. But we'll see. Cheers!

Polygons and aquarels

Howdy y'all, how have you been? I've been busy with studying, 9 to 5 plus five hours of travelling daily, and I can tell you: that does not leave much time for other projects. However, as my mom had her birthday recently and today I was ill at home and couldn't focus on school stuff, I've been picking up making illustrations for postcards again.

The last card I've made was almost half a year ago, trying out polygons for the first time for a Christmas/holidays card we sent.

The card below is the birthday card from a couple of days ago, using polygons again which is a style I just love. I've been doing a tutorial on how to make polygon illustrations from 3D files with the software Blender, but I have yet to finish them so these are simply made in Inkscape (open source and free Illustrator-like software). The background was taken from a downloadable polygon backgrounds pack  from Spoongraphics (who, by the way, has lots of awesome tutorials; if you're interested in graphic design I'd really recommend visiting his site).

Today I just didn't get anywhere with my school stuff and felt ill, so I chose to move that work to the weekend and instead try out a new graphical style: water colours.
Using tips from this and this tutorial, and the awesome watercolour textures from Carolina Garofani, I made two cards. The first one of a daisy, for a 'spring' kind of feeling since it's very sunny today, and the second one with a crown, continuing on a design I didn't finish last year.

It's King's day tomorrow in the Netherlands, the first one ever probably. Last year our queen abdicated and her son became king, the first one after over a century of queen regnants. Traditionally, the queen's birthday has been celebrated in a day of orange-coloured craziness, and this well-loved holiday is of course continuing with the king.

Keywords on this day: orange, more orange, crazy hats and outfits (orange, of course), free market, childrens' games, music stages everywhere, beer, party!