Nederlandse tekenaar Siegfried Woldhek in Metropolitan New York

Op woensdag 14 september opent in het Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York de tentoonstelling Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine. Van tekenaar Siegfried Woldhek (1951), bekend van zijn schrijversportretten in Vrij Nederland en politieke prenten in NRC Handelsblad, zijn twee tekeningen opgenomen in de tentoonstelling.

De tentoonstelling laat vele werken zien uit de collectie van het Metropolitan museum (Leonardo da Vinci, Francisco de Goya, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, David Levine, enz.). Het toont satirische tekeningen en karikaturen in al hun vormen, van de Italiaanse Renaissance tot heden.

Woldhek: “Ik ben een groot bewonderaar van de tekeningen van Da Vinci, Goya, Daumier en natuurlijk David Levine. Dat daar twee van mijn tekeningen bij mogen hangen, is een enorme eer.”
De tekeningen van Woldhek in het Metropolitan zijn een portret van George W. Bush en een portret van George W. Bush en Dick Cheney.

Siegfried Woldhek tekent sinds 1976 schrijverportretten in Vrij Nederland. Voor NRC Handelsblad maakt Woldhek sinds 1980 politieke prenten en tekent hij de zogenaamde bordes-‘foto’ van het nieuwe kabinet, nog voordat de officiële bordesfoto gemaakt is.  Wim de Bie noemt Woldhek ‘de beste satirische tekenaar van Nederland’.

Het contact tussen Woldhek en het Metropolitan Museum is tot stand gekomen via museum Atlas van Stolk in Rotterdam dat twee jaar geleden 500 originele tekeningen van Woldhek heeft aangekocht.

Siegfried Woldhek heeft in 2008 op het TED congres in Monterey een lezing gehouden over Leonardo da Vinci (zie ook: DWDD). Ook heeft hij voor TED Los Angeles 2011 alle sprekers geportretteerd voor de programmagids.

AFTh van der Heijden, Gerard Reve, Oek de Jong

AFTh van der Heijden, Gerard Reve, Oek de Jong, originally uploaded by Siegfried Woldhek.

Digital portrait of three Dutch authors for the VN sex special. The colours reflect the way they write about sex.

Heleen van Royen

Heleen van Royen, originally uploaded by Siegfried Woldhek.

Shiny portrait of Dutch author Heleen van Royen, who tries hard to be the naughtiest 45 plus girl in the country. Made on my iPad while travelling back from Scotland.

iPad portraits at TED Global

TED Global took place  in Edinburgh last week and I made 50 portraits of the participants during the breaks.  It was an interesting experience.  Normally I sit at home, alone and have a full day to make a portrait.  I love good paper and the feel of a brush or pen. Now I was surrounded by spectators, with a nervous sitter in front of me and worked on the tiny, smooth surface of an iPad with 10 minutes to create a likeness.  Getting good looking lines and making it look digital, rather than an imitation of a portrait on paper was quite a challenge.
I tried various approaches during the different days of the TED Conference and the results can be seen here,
Below are a few examples

Digital Portraits

I've been asked by AutoDesk to make digital portraits of the TED Global 2011 attendants (Edinburgh, July 11-15).  . Should be fun, but it is not something I usually do, so I need to practice a bit and make some choices.

• What tablet? Rather than going for a slate tablet, the instrument of choice will be an iPad.  AutoDesk's SketchBook Pro works wonderfully on an iPad.  If I use the same program on a windows tablet, I need a keyboard. So I decided to  forgo the pressure sensitivity & slightly larger format and opt for the easy interface of the iPad instead.
• Which stylus?  The pogo stylus is to inaccurate for my taste.  The Dagi stylus seemed great in the beginning but quickly became a bit rough;  the lines wouldn't flow smoothly anymore and it made a scratchy sound on the iPad surface (with protective covering). Dagi apparently has made an improved version, which I hope to receive soon.  But in the meantime there are many YouTube movies on how to make your own stylus, and most of them are not much better than what is available in the stores.  Except one:  recently I found a YouTube movie that shows how to make your own stylus, that it is fantastically smooth and easy to use. The guy who developed it goes by the name Koabusks.  Check it out here. 
• Which style?  I want to make portraits that look nice as well as digital, not as if made on paper.  More about the quest for a proper digital portrait in the following blogs.

Back on blog

I've not posted on this blog for several months, although I've added many new portraits to my Flickr site and my regular site during that same period.  Getting those portraits on the sites and then twitter about them was all that I managed to do. But now I'm back.

Beatrix & Merkel

Beatrix and Merkel at the occasion of the official visit that the Dutch queen pays to Germany. Published in NRC Handelsblad 12 Apr 2011 with an article of R Koopmans who argues that the countries have a distorted view of one another.
The design was determined by the fact that it was going to be printed on two pages, with a fold in the middle.

Mark Rutte, het zonnetje in huis

Prime Minister Mark Rutte is a cheerful fellow, so why not picture him that way.
I'm trying to get acquainted with ways to draw digitally, and this is a first example.

Dry Brush technique by Igor Kazarin

Igor Kazarin, a Russian artist, is quite a master with the dry brush.  He uses oil paint, mixed with a few drops of oil. But that doesn't necessarily make for interesting portraits.  WHY make them in the first place?  Why not simply reproduce the photo that was used for reference?  See one of his videos here.

Hans Teeuwen

Was asked to make a portrait of the dark Dutch comedian Hans Teeuwen for NRC Handelsblad. 90 minute deadline.... Pffooi.