On the 22nd of May I was invited by artist Joanna Klęczar to take part in an art share on social media, posting one of my artworks every day for a week. Normally I do not take part in challenges on Facebook, but this time I thought it would be a good excuse to look at my old folders/sketchbooks and share some art that I made in the past.
I have so many old works lying around, so choosing which to share was tough. It proved impossible, so in the end I randomly picked a drawing each day.
I took pictures and uploaded them on Facebook and Instagram. These are the results.

I am working on updating my website and including more of my work. A lot of it is not online yet and many old drawings remain to be scanned. Want to see more of my (old) work? Anything in particular? Let me know in the comments below.

A few years ago, I discovered the sport of disc golf. I have always liked frisbee, I regularly used to throw ultimate style frisbees with friends in the park and even took a frisbee with me on a trip to New York back in 2012. It was actually in Central Park and on the beach of Coney Island that my good friend Michał and I came up with our own "precision frisbee games": awarding points to the person who manages to hit a tree trunk or the base of a light pole from a certain distance, whomever gets to X points first wins. It must have been around that time that I also saw disc golf for the first time on YouTube, and Michał and I realised that what we had come up with already existed. After that week in New York, I forgot all about it for a while, because it was only in winter 2017 that I tried disc golf for the first time. Michał and I got back into frisbee and decided to order some of the specialised discs for disc golf on Frisbeewinkel.nl: 2 putters, 2 midranges and 2 drivers. Our first disc golf course was in Sloterpark, Amsterdam. I immediately loved the game, but didn't have time to play much, until I got really hooked on disc golf in 2019 and started playing regularly. I became a member of DSA, which is the disc golf club of Amsterdam that gathers in Sloterpark, and played my first tournaments. I started watching loads of videos on the sport, particularly the tournament coverage by JomezPro and I joined the PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association).​

Above: video by JomezPro of a skins match featuring some of the top disc golf pros like Paul McBeth, Ricky Wysocki, Eagle McMahon and Nate Sexton.

​In essence disc golf is a golf variant that uses frisbees instead of balls: the goal is to get from point A to point B in as little throws as possible. Point B is not a hole, but a metal basket (also called a "polehole") to throw the disc in. Many standard golf terms have been adapted by disc golf: if you are already familiar with par, birdie, bogie, eagle, starting off the tee, driving, putting and all that good stuff, you will fit right in. Not that it is necessary to know them at all, I had never played golf in my life and did not know any of the terminology. Once you start playing disc golf, you will also start hearing other mysterious abracadabra proper to the game, like "inside the circle", "hyzer" and "anhyzer", "flippy discs", "overstable" or "understable" discs and so forth.
Disc golf uses special discs that are smaller than normal frisbees. They are specifically developed for the sport and they are not suitable to catch, but intended to throw as far or accurately as possible. There are many types of disc golf discs for different purposes and in different types of plastic. The different discs are designed to fly in different ways: curving to the left when thrown straight ("stable" or "overstable"), curving to the right ("understable" or "flippy") or simply dead straight. There are discs to throw super far with (if you "have the arm"), discs to throw upshots or approaches with and of course the putters for up close. 

There is something very satisfying about throwing a disc and seeing it fly exactly as you intended. The struggle to get to that point is what really gets you hooked: it takes some time to learn how the different discs fly and it is all the more rewarding when something finally clicks and you manage the perfect flight. Throwing the disc into the chains of the basket is probably the best part of the game, as you get rewarded with a loud clatter of the chains hitting the pole. Definitely the Pavlov sort of thing.
The Netherlands has about 20 disc golf courses. I played five different ones so far: in Sloterpark (Amsterdam), Groeter Zandgat (Groet/Schoorl), Buitencentrum Almeerderhout (Almere), Van Tuyllpark (Zoetermeer) and Park Oudegein (Nieuwegein). When I was in Poland half a year ago I made sure to  also play the Vesec course in the Czech Republic, just over the Polish border, close to Liberec.

Around the time I became a member of DSA, in the winter of 2019, Paul Sterk asked me if I would like to design a disc. Justin Long designed two new club discs with a distinctive Dutch theme (as is tradition for the DSA discs): he placed the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer in a disc golf setting, one version with her smiling at a putt being made in the background, the other one with her frowning in agony at a missed putt.
My design would be used for one of the biggest, if not the biggest, disc golf tournament in the Netherlands: The AMSterdam Challenge that will be organised in the weekend of 3-4 October 2020 (if Covid-19 allows it). Since the tournament takes places in Sloterpark and this is the disc golf course I played most on and know best, I decided I wanted to make a design that celebrates the park and its character.
​I took the hill in the centre of the park as inspiration: a hill that defines hole 9, one of the signature holes of the course, since you throw from the top of the hill all the way to the other side of the grass field. It is the longest hole of the park, a par 4 that spans 209 meters (according to UDisc) from the tee to the pin with a picturesque panorama view. The hill itself is a defining feature of the park, because you cannot miss it when you walk around. On the top of it there is a big sculpture created out of weathering steel called Groot Landschap ("Grand Landscape" in English) made by Wessel Couzijn in 1974. The shape of the artwork to me resembles a giant anchor of sorts, the enormous bones of an alien creature or perhaps some kind of rock formation. Interestingly, the plaque at the bottom of the hill reads "this artwork represents nothing but itself", suggesting that the title "Grand Landscape" is not so much a description of the artwork itself but instead a hope that it should be a natural part of its surroundings. Another reason for me to choose the hill as quintessentially Sloterpark is the rabbits that you find everywhere in the park. The entire hill of hole 9 is their home, a giant warren with many holes and underground burrows. 

Above: photos of the rabbits and their warren, the hill of hole 9 in Sloterpark, taken in August 2019.
Below: video impression of the hill, its rabbits and the artwork Groot Landschap (sorry for the music).

I ended up creating two versions of the design: rabbits with and without hair. At first I thought the better design was the rabbits without hair, but later I started appreciating the rabbits with hair more, as they look more real. Unfortunately the requirements for printing on discs made it clear that printing too many details close to each other could result in blurring and smudging, so DSA chose to go with the "white" rabbits in the end.

The design will be printed as hot stamps on discs by Latitude 64, a disc golf company from Sweden, which is also the main sponsor of the AMSterdam Challenge 2020. The disc mold that will be used will probably be the Opto Sapphire, a distance driver, in a variety of colours, probably also with different colours of the hot stamp. I have never thrown the Opto Sapphire, but it looks gorgeous and I am super excited about it.
The second sponsor of the tournament is Matt Moonen Arbeidsdeskundigen, so both logos were included in the design. Above the hill and the sculpture, I placed the logo of DSA, which incidentally looks like a sun in the sky.
I am excited that every player of the tournament will receive this disc, as it will be included in the player pack that each player gets at the tournament after registration and payment. A once in a lifetime disc that will become a collector's item amongst lovers of Dutch disc golf.
If you want to know more about the playing times of the tournament to come and watch or you want to participate, have a look here.

There were many stages to the design, several moments when I thought it was finished, then coming back to it to tweak something, include logos, resize certain parts for printing, and an unforeseen stage of vectorising. In the end I am happy with the design and grateful for the opportunity to design my first disc golf disc. I cannot wait to hold it in my hands and throw hole 9 with it. 

My girlfriend Justyna and I got the idea to make a drawing together. I've recently been enjoying watercolour so that became the medium of choice. We also used a bit of ink. It took us a few hours to make and is smaller in size than most of my drawings: 13.2 x 25.2 centimeters, on special watercolour paper. The artwork shows a sleeping fox at night, lying in the grass next to a goban with go stones on it. 

On the 13th of April, Justyna and I did our first paper marbling session in 2020. In this blog post I share the pictures of the process and the final results.

Paper marbling, also known by its Turkish name ebru or by its Japanese equivalent suminagashi (墨流し), is a technique of ​aqueous surface design. Marbled paper dates back to at least the 12th century AD and has traditionally been used for book binding and other decorative purposes. By dropping paint on the surface of water or a thickened fluid called size, and by manipulating that paint, all kinds of wonderful patterns can be created. The designs are directly transferred from the size onto paper or other materials such as fabric.   
I discovered paper marbling in 2016 through a short 1970's documentary called The Art of the Marbler. Since 2018 I have been incorporating marbled designs in my art, particularly in my series of designs on the game of go that include animals. I sell those designs as posters and postcards to go players, go tournaments and other go organisations such as clubs, national associations/federations and schools.

It is always a lot of work to prepare a marbling session. Personally I mix a powder extract of carrageenan seaweed or a thickener with water to create the size. This has to be prepared the day before you want to marble, as the mixing creates air pockets that need time to disappear. It is possible to marble with air bubbles on your size, but this will result in white circles on your print where the bubbles touch the paper. In most cases that is not the desired result.
​For the paint I use "ebru boyası" by the brand Art Deco, especially made for marbling. I have tried many types of paint, water, carrageenan extract, paper, you name it, but my best results came after I bought a ready-made set from Dodin's Marbling, a shop from Israel. Later I bought the same paint from an online marbling store in the Czech Republic and some additional tools like brushes with horsehair bristles from shops in Turkey.
The great fun of marbling comes after all the preparations have been taken care of, once you can start dripping paint on the surface of the size-fluid. The drops of paint expand and flow, patterns in all colours appear with ease and are just as easily changed with the touch of a stylus or a comb. It is satisfying to control the fluid motions of the paint. At the same time, you are never fully in control, since the paint finds its own natural way to flow. Marbling always surprises: one moment you have a beautiful pattern, then it changes completely when you drop a new colour in the tray. Or you think the colours look so-so in the tray, but when you transfer them onto paper all of a sudden they come to life. There are so many techniques to create different styles of patterns. Marbling is a bottomless well, an endless source of unique art that reminds me of nature and the cosmos.

Would you like to see more of my marbling? Have a look here.
The originals of these marbles on paper are for sale for 7,50 euros each. Let me know if you're interested!

To celebrate having almost 800 likes on my Facebook page and because I want to do something to lighten the mood during the Covid-19 crisis, I decided to start a new project on the 1st of May. I will be making new drawings regularly (the aim is new art every few days) and I am giving away the originals amongst my followers.
This is the second drawing I will be giving away in the lottery. 

Giveaway drawing #2 "Sniffing the Third Line"
14-05-2020
20,4 x 20,9 cm
Watercolour and ink on paper

​I have been thinking about drawing a cat playing go for a while, inspired by several photos of cats playing around with go stones and in particular by two Japanese artworks made circa 1850. A few years ago Dutch go collector Theo van Ees showed me two woodblock prints by Kunisada Utagawa I (1786-1864) from his collection, in which a cat or a cat-like animal is positioned next to a go board with stones on it. These artworks were printed in a small picture book sized 17.5 x 11.5 centimeters, called ehon ​in Japanese, one of them on the cover and the other on the inside.
The print from the inside of the booklet is black and white and seems to depict a mythological go match taking place in a forest. Perhaps the two players are situated on a mountain, because clouds are visible under and above the branches of the trees. Next to the two fierce individuals, who are clearly immersed in their game of go, sits an animal. It probably is not a cat, but instead a wild animal of sorts, since it has claws and finds itself in a mountain forest. A bear, maybe? 
According to the seller that Theo bought the book from, the print shows "a demon playing the game of go". That is all I know about this print and I would love to know more about its story.  

​​​Edit on 19th of May:
My sister Philo Ouweleen, who is a Japanologist, has delved more deeply into the matter. 
Because of the added value of the written text in this type of booklet and its date, it is more accurately described as kusazoshi (草双紙) rather than ehon. More specifically, this is a gokan (合巻), a type of picture book that was popular in the late Edo period. Quality scans of all gokan can be viewed on this page and over here.
The volume that depicts these two go scenes is written by Mantei Oga (万亭応賀, 1818~1890). The title on the cover reads 倭文庫十七編, which roughly translates to "Japanese writings collection, 17th volume". Its full title is written on the inside of the book and reads 釈迦八相倭文庫, meaning "The Eightfold Path of the Buddha, collection of Japanese books". This volume is number 17 in a series of 58 books that tell an adapted, easily readable version of the story of Gautama Buddha and his path to enlightenment. The woodblock print artwork in the series appears to be a collaboration between Utagawa Kunisada I (歌川 国貞, 1786-1864), Utagawa Kunisada II (歌川 国貞, 1823-1880) and Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋 暁斎, 1831-1889). Utagawa Toyokuni (歌川豊国, 1769- 1825) is also mentioned. The series was published between 1845 and 1871. The publication of volume 17 can indeed be pinpointed to circa 1850.

All pages of the 17th volume can be viewed in its entirety here. Number 27 and 30 show the artworks that I refer to and in addition number 36 also shows a go scene. 
And what about the black and white print and the mysterious bear? Actually, the bear is a cat afterall! A bakeneko to be precise, a supernatural creature (yokai) from Japanese mythology and folklore. According to the legends, a bakeneko - a "ghost cat" or "monster cat" - begins life as an ordinary house cat which is fed too much and becomes unusually large. Once reaching an immense size (I kid you not), the animal begins to display magical abilities or supernatural powers such as therianthropy, making it a shapeshifter. Pretty epic for a fat cat!

The drawing giveaway project that I started recently is a good reason to draw more. It stops me from procrastinating and forces me to pick up a pen and start making art.  
The second drawing I started as part of this resolution turned out to be a tree. Before I knew it, the outlines of the branches and roots were already on the paper, and then I decided I was going to fill the entire thing with tiny shading. 

The drawing took me several days to finish and was a lot of work, although I did not work on it continuously. It was relaxing and intense at the same time to put my mind on blank and fill the tree with detail. I am happy I stuck with it, because the final result is better than I expected. 
​
I showed the artwork to a few of my friends. One told me it reminds him of the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. He was intent on buying it and I'm happy to say the artwork already found a new home. Another friend of mine associated it with Norse mythology: the tree of life Yggdrasil and the ravens Huginn and Muninn. Someone else commented on Instagram that it reminded him of the book "Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill" by Otfried Preußler. A book I am eager to read now. On Facebook an acquaintance linked the style of the drawing to the style of the film "Le Planète Sauvage" drawn by Roland Topor. Coincidentally, this is a film that I mention in my book "Kamagurkistan" on the oeuvre of the Belgian artist Kamagurka (Luc Zeebroek). Topor was an inspiration for Kamagurka, especially in his early work.
My father was reminded of the poem "Mitleid hin und her" by Friedrich Nietzsche.

I took all of the associations as great compliments. I think some Game of Thrones inspiration might have sneaked in there as well. What does it remind you of? I would love to hear your thoughts.

To celebrate having almost 800 likes on my Facebook page and because I want to do something to lighten the mood during the Covid-19 crisis, I decided to start a new project on the 1st of May. I will be making new drawings regularly (the aim is new art every few days) and I am giving away the originals amongst my followers.

To join and have a chance to win, leave a comment under one of my giveaway artworks on my Facebook or Instagram page.  A few days after posting I will do a draw and announce the lucky winner. Please take into account that the postage costs are to be paid by the winner, as I plan to do this several times and the costs would be too high for me to pay out of my own pocket.
I am also considering doing a lottery type sale for which anyone can buy any number of lottery tickets for a small amount of money. The lottery draw would take place a few weeks later and the winner can choose a drawing from a few works I have selected for the lottery. 

If you want to support the artist, please also consider a donation.
Suggestions for drawing subjects are welcome!

Giveaway drawing #1 "Growth"
30-02-2020
20,9 x 28,6 cm
​Ink on paper

The draw for this artwork was done on the 7th of May. It was won by Lorenzo Allegrucci and is on its way to Italy! Congratulations Lorenzo and thank you for your continued support.

I recently finished my latest art commission, a logo for De Bier aan Huisman, a one man company from Amsterdam in the beer sector. De Bier aan Huisman (www.debieraanhuisman.nl) is run by beer sommelier Daniël Huisman, who provides beer tasting events for groups and companies.
I have known Daniël for many years, we went to the same high school, and I always knew him as "the beer expert". Sometimes we organize board game evenings with a group of friends and on several occasions Daniël brought specialty beers for everyone to try. What I didn't know until I worked with him is that he studied 3 years to become a beer sommelier and even went on a trip to Austria to get his certified diploma. 

Personally, I love it when friends, family or acquaintances come to me for artwork. It means that my work is being picked up and appreciated. So it was a pleasant surprise to get a message from Daniël requesting a get together to discuss the making of a logo for his start-up!
A few days later we met at Gollem aan het Water, a lovely café at Entrepotdok 64 that specializes in, of course, specialty beers. Probably the only location of the five Gollem bars in Amsterdam that Daniël hasn't actually worked at. There we talked about Daniël's business concept of providing beer workshops and tastings on location, his ideas for the logo and the message he wants to convey on his website: funky and fun, yet sophisticated. He showed me a few examples of beer artwork that he likes, amongst which a drawing by artist Dan Blakeslee for brewery Alchemist Beer and the "Hoptopuss" by graphic designer Luke Keil for a beer can of brewery 81 Artisan. 

We also talked about the shape of hops, Amsterdam and Daniël's plan to buy a bakfiets (cargo bike) for his business. And about my own surreal and graphic drawing style, which he wanted to shine through in the logo. 
I was free to draw whatever I deemed appropriate, and even though the concept remained vague, a few ideas already started taking form during our talk: a bird man riding a cargo bike, the bike overloaded with beer bottles, perhaps hops growing out of those bottles and forming intricate shapes. I also pictured the hops plant forming the letters of De Bier aan Huisman, but I was not sure how viable this idea would be.

I had a lot of fun with this commission and I'm proud of the final result. Are you a beer freak in Amsterdam or do you know nothing about beer but are you curious to experience a beer tasting with a professional? Send Daniël an e-mail! I highly recommend it. 

This blog post is the second edition of Looking Back, in which I look back on artwork I have made in the past.
​
Soon the 2018-2019 edition of the Dutch Go Association Yearbook will be published. Each year the Nederlandse Go Bond (NGoB) publishes such a booklet in which the most important seasonal go happenings of the Netherlands are recorded, along some major international go news. 
As is becoming tradition, my go art is on the cover! This time it is my raccoon dog who drums his belly, a pun on the Japanese name of a famous tesuji combination of two stones played on the first line, capturing the opponent's group of stones in a spectacular way. The green marbling pattern was created by hand in 2019, then scanned and cleaned up digitally.

The raccoon dog on the cover of the 2018-2019 Dutch Go Yearbook is the fourth in a series of covers I have made for the Nederlandse Go Bond that feature animals, go positions and paper marbling. Here are the previous three:

And a picture of what the three booklets look like next to each other:

The cover of the 2017-2018 NGoB Yearbook features my go butterfly, which originally was a logo that I created for the European Youth Go Championships (EYGC) of 2015 that took place in Zandvoort.
The patterns on the wings of the butterfly show several tesuji shapes, such as the crane's nest and a snapback.

The 2016-2017 edition, probably my personal favourite so far, incorporates my drawing The Tortoise Shell, a pun on the Japanese name for one of the strongest shapes in go called 亀の甲​ (the tortoise shell): a tortoise rocking the tortoise shell on his tortoise shell.

For the 2015-2016 yearbook I chose a design featuring Lee Sedol's famous move 78 that made AlphaGo go on tilt in game four of their best of five match in 2016. Lee Sedol lost the overall match to the computer program by 4 to 1 games, making AlphaGo the first computer to defeat a top level professional in the history of go. This wedging move by Sedol resulted in the only victory in the matchup for the Korean and became a symbolic victory of human capability.  


If you look closely, you might notice a difference in the look of the elephant cover with the following editions: the elephant is black and white, since most of my artwork was still black and white in those days, but also unlike the subsequent covers the marbled background is one shade of colour and blends together with the go board. The original was blue and white, but an editorial decision was made to change it to brown. The future editions were not altered, showing a small difference in style.

Technically the NGoB Yearbook series with my artwork on the cover started with the 2014-2015 edition, for which my drawing called Fighting Spirit was used. I don't really consider this volume as part of the series, however, because it stands out from the rest. It is completely black and white and as I had not yet discovered paper marbling, there is no exciting background. On top of that, the actual go drawing ended on the back side of the booklet instead of the front. See pictures below. I also include some examples of what each yearbook I illustrated looks like on the inside.  

My go art has also been published on two magazines of the German Go Association, called the Deutsche Go-Zeitung. The Raccoon Dog Drums His Belly and Fighting Spirit make their first appearances on the first DGoZ volume of 2015 and the second DGoZ ​volume of 2019.

Do you run or write a go editorial, magazine, bulletin, leaflet, website, book, you name it? And would you like to include my art? Please leave a comment!