Painting adventures

The past month I dived into one big online painting adventure called Bloom True. It was an incredible fun, colourful and above all messy *I LOVE MESSY* experience. I learned a lot, not only about painting intuitively but also about relating topics as letting go, being kind to yourself whilst creating and not taking things, including yourself & your work, too seriously. I worked on several canvasses at the same time. I'll show you some results so far. They're not finished, just on their way to a yet unknown "destination" :-)

And my first finished painting ever, yay! It's the smalles one I've been working on, 30 x 30 cm :-)

Modern Day Nymph

I think I'm in love with this one :-) Inspired by a photograph of  Ed Ross. Drawn with coloured pencils in my "new" antique book that I turned into a sketchbook. 

Radiant

A lot of business up here lately! I've been having a lot of fun with Radiant Faces. I ran into this online event by accident and knew right away that it was exactly what I would love to participate in. So, since the start of October I'm having a lot of fun with all kinds of possible ways to draw and paint...FACES, yay! One of my FAVOURITE subjects! Some results so far:

Birthday Cards

Some time ago I decided to start participating in design contests every now and then. Not only because they're fun, but because it's a great possibility to build up a portfolio as well. The works above I made for a competition with the theme "cute characters". I just love to create these small fun characters! First I sketched them and then I painted them with acrylic paint, black pencil and charcoal. And I gave on a background in Photoshop. I'd love to get these printed, in fact, I'm going to! I'll show you the results soon!

True Beauty...

Tadaaa, here's the piece I made for the Global Talent Search I told you about in my latest post! It's also showcased in a gallery amongst the other 999 (!) entries of other artists. All amazing work! Check out Lilla's website for sure to see more great work made in this competition.
Although I didn't make it to the Top 50 that went to the semi final, I'm very happy I took part and experienced the whole thing. And I'm also excited about this piece of work and some other pieces I made!

The Spark

It's been a very busy week! Last week the Global Talent Search of Lilla Rogers Studio started. It's a design competition looking for the ultimate new illustration talent. From my Bootcamp experience I knew Lilla's assignments are super fun, so I thought it would be a great experience to enter. We got the assignment past week, a very exciting one: make a Wall Art piece, theme  'Little Terrariums'. I dived into the subject exploring terrarium shapes, succulent textures and colors. I've drawn and painted a lot and than some more. I loved it! Pictures?

The small sketch (top right) was the spark to the idea for my final piece...

Along the way I kept turning left, right, left, trying out several ideas that popped in my head. It resulted in my final piece and some other fun pieces. A very productive week for sure! What I was really happy with was that I didn't freeze up, just had fun and managed to submit a piece I'm pretty proud of. Rewarded myself with a pat on the back, feels like a great prize already!

Above two of the extra pieces I made. Although it wasn't what I was looking for as a final piece, I'm really happy with it
as a result!

We are asked not to show any final work until this Tuesday, when the gallery goes online with everyones work in it. So...I'll show you my final piece in a few days!

Just for Fun

Busy, busy, busy...

With drawing, drawing and some more drawing...Just what I love doing most! Have a great weekend too!

Book illustrations

When I was in Italy the past few weeks, the Zwarte Cross Festival launched the children's book that I made some illustrations for. I was really happy to receive two copies this weekend! When I see my drawings in the book I can't help but feel a little bit proud. And for some reason it feels odd as well!
Good news is that all 2000 copies got sold during the festival. So they're printing a new bunch of books right now. Isn't that just cool?

An example of what one of the illustrations looks like in "real life" and how they used it in 
the book.

And another piece I made, my favorite :-)

Holding on...

...to that summertime feeling. Time flies by when your having fun. So, let's keep up the fun then?
I had a lovely time in Italy. I'm really happy though to get back here at home, where very exciting things are happening. I'll be writing about it soon!
For now I'm just holding on to this beautiful moment watching my baby girl dreaming away at a sunny afternoon on the beach. One to remember! Hope you're all having a great summer as well?

Summertime!

...& happy summertimes for you too!

My first Love

As a mother of 2 young kids, I noticed there's something magical about their favorite first cuddly toys. Any parent reading this will probably agree? Although most of them are dirty, smelly and almost falling apart, they mean the world to them. The way they grab them and keep them close makes me smile. My boy's favorite cuddly toy inspired me to make this watercolor/pen drawing.
I think I fell in love with this one as well ;-)

Get Salt and crafty!

I received the new issue of Salt magazine this week. That's always a pleasure! I know a lot of people don't know about this great (dutch) magazine. It's an active and adventurous lifestyle magazine. Although the magazine is not about arts or crafts or anything that normally inspires me, I love reading it. It has a very pretty layout with matte paper and interesting interviews and subjects.  On top of that it has beautiful photographs in it. Great for inspiration on colours and so on. And the great news: it's not expensive at all! Check it out here for a good read every two months. And after reading: great for tearing apart, gluing, collaging and other crafty stuff.
Do you have any inspiring favorite magazines? I'd certainly love to hear about them!

CHILL!

Just a lovely message for you to start your weekend and let go of all your working-week-related-stress! Have a great one!

Colours!

I always get soooo happy when I play around with colours! Opening my coloured pencil box gives me an instant happy feeling. My small PanPastel boxes do that too. As well as all the other colourful stuff in my small studio. Colours are a powerful tool in brightening up my day. Do you know that feeling too?
I recently discovered Louise Gale. Next to being an mixed media artist, she's someone how knows a lot about colours and their specific energy. She gives online (5 week) classes about this subject....yummie! Signed up for a class starting in September. Looking forward to it already!

All I need

Home is...

Recently I've been making lot of work during the Mats Bootcamp assignments and the ABSPD Module 1 course. I was filing it all in big folders this evening. I came across all kinds of nice pieces and ideas that I abandoned halfway making them. Isn't that a shame? I decided to start finishing them one by one and make them into pieces I'd like to have in my portfolio. Started out with this one. It's a combination of a pen drawing, coloured in with Tombow markers and coloured pencils. I'd like to place this image on a postcard or perhaps a poster...What do you think?

Sketchbooks

Who doesn't love a good old-fashioned sketchbook? I do for sure. I enjoy to see sketchbooks of other artists. And I especially love to keep them myself. They are my own private little playgrounds where everything is possible. I save them piled up together on my desk. Stuffed away between books on my shelves. They're waiting to be opened in time and browsed through with different eyes. It's often then, that these old drawings inspire into making new pieces of art. I love my sketchbooks!

Details of some older and newer sketchbooks of mine.

And last but not least, a suggestion for two fun books about this subject. Certainly worth reading and drooling upon! Have fun this weekend!

Back garden Magic

What are you doing today? I just had a lovely moment: kids sleeping their peaceful afternoon nap and me in my back garden trying to captivate some small and beautiful details on camera. Whilst on my knees looking through the lens, I came across an exciting adventure my 3 year old son started before he went sleeping :-) Gave me a big smile instantly. Feels good to enjoy the small things in life!

Books, books, books...

No, I haven't got an obsession with art books. I just really like them :-) I added a beautiful piece to my collection last week. It's a book about intuitive painting, written by Flora Bowley. Doesn't this book just look gorgeous at itself? Even without having read it, it became one of my favorites right away. After reading it, it stayed that way. Very inspiring stuff in there. Ready to be made in to practice very soon! An exciting journey at itself, as I've always wanted to paint. But the technical idea I had about it, kept me away from it. Flora's approach is very liberating and sweeps away all the technical aspects and just leaves the fun and playful part. This book's a serious recommendation for anyone looking for a fun, energizing and soul-searching adventure in painting. Can't wait to get started myself!

Faces

There are some subjects that I just keep drawing over and over. One of these things are faces. Although I must have drawn more than a 1000 faces, I never get bored of it. Sometimes I draw after a reference image, but most of the times I just draw them from fantasy. With pen, watercolors, coloured pencils, it doesn't matter, I just like mixing them up. Do you have certain subjects your drawn to specifically? And why is that? I sure would like to know with my obsession! Hopefully I'll figure that out one day whilst drawing a pretty face :-).

Being Brave

Quotes about bravery always have a special attraction to me. Maybe that's because I would love to feel really brave myself more often. And with being brave comes being bold. Something I'm certainly not when it comes to showing off my own work. I guess there's a lot of self-criticism in the way. I know I'm not the only one with this problem. Some of you recognize it for sure?

But...I recently found a solution that helps me a little bit to get out of my comfortzone whenever I need to. I started collecting all these wonderful and inspiring quotes. I write them down and tape them on the wall of my studio. Hanging there in silence in front of me. Reminding me to take brave and bold babysteps on my way to doing what I love!

Do What You Love!

In May I finished my Do What You Love adventure. It was a 5 week soul searching experience in which I learned an incredible lot about myself and my passions. My fears. My weaknesses. My strengths. My big dreams. All those things I always used to ignore, because they just felt like really heavy, ungrabbable topics I could never figure out.
For me this course was perfect because it gave me the practical tools to tackle these heavy topics. With Beth Kempton as our inspiring travel guide I "fought" through exercises that were often difficult to start, but once I had a good go at it, turned out to be extremely powerful! On top of that I had a great group of fellow travel companions, all in the same boat but on their own ocean. The support of this group was really positive, warming, like a big family. Although the course is now over, we still 'see' each other in our closed Facebook group. It will stay open indefinitely to share our thoughts, struggles, plans and dreams on our way to doing what we love. For me this feels like one of the biggest gifts that this course gave me! I'd really recommend this course to anyone, really anyone, would love to get a boost of positive life energy. Let's be honest, who doesn't like that?!

One of the things that bloomed up in this Facebook group was a creative postcard swap. I've been working on an illustration to send to Helen Stewart, I just recently found out she has a lovely blog and business about knitting! Although I don't have a passion for knitting (yet..never say never ;-), I was absolutely stunned by her beautiful website and podcasts. Her website is a real fun visit for the creative spirits under us! I'll wrap up todays post with a nice pic I made whilst working on the illustration for Helen. A great weekend to you all!

Bless this mess

 Some time ago I shared some workspace pictures in a Facebook group. I felt a little ashamed, because as usual, my desk was full with clutter. Piles with all kind of loose papers with sketches. Pens, pencils, eraser. Torn out pages of magazines. An empty cup + tea pot. At least three different brushes. Water cup. Dirty cloth. Books. And so on. In my post I mentioned that I probably should have cleaned up before shooting the picture. Too which one of the wise ladies said: "No, you shouldn't! Bless that mess! This messiness just comes with great creativity."...Wow! I embraced her words as being the truth. What a delightful way of looking at my messy tabletop!
So, from that moment on, whenever I leave my workspace, I look behind. Take a final glimpse. And adore all of the messiness in that tiny and packed, happy place of mine.

Story in a Bottle

Yay!!! I've finished my final piece for this month's MATS Bootcamp Assignment: Nautical theme! I'm really excited about it. This month was sooo much fun. For some reason the nautical theme just hit me. Made tons of sketches and ended up using some icons out of them in my final design. We had to make a piece for the Wall Art market, which is a flourishing business, as Lilla tells us. For me this felt like a perfect assignment, as I had a lot of freedom to make what I like. The image did have to meet some exact measurements, but for the rest you were pretty much free what to make. So lots of time to play around. And that just happens to be one of my favorite ways of spending time ;-)

Down here I'll show you some pictures of the steps I took and the sketches I made, that led to my final piece.

I started playing around with my favorite Tombow markers at first. They always give me a good start and a nice playful feeling. Decided to try out watersoluble crayons as well (Neocolor 2, Caran d'Ache). Started with drawing some basic shapes, then added lots of water and finished with black pens and white gel pens. Don't these whales just have the most beautiful blue colours? I really like them, especially the one on the bottom!

An idea popped up, worked it out with pencil and black pen. Decided to keep sketching, I didn't feel like this was to be my definite piece.

Then I made some small sketches in black and white. Used a scribbling way of filling them up with a black pen. Gave them kind of a textured look. I thought it might fit with a final piece with a little bit of a distressed, old look.

I felt really happy with the icons, but just didn't know how to use them. Decided to give it a rest. A few days later an idea popped up. I would put the icons on a scroll in a bottle. The scroll would have to tell a small story. So I just started sketching. Trying to get a picture that's in your head on the paper, is the most fun piece of the process for me. Like writing a story with pictures. I love it!

 And here's my final piece! I used Photoshop to put it all together including the text. Used a page out of a very old map collection as background. Scanned in some cardboard as well and put that as a texture over it to get kind of an old, faded look. Added some more texture (ink splatters) and text to it, and voila, I felt like my final piece was done! Do you like it? 

A Sneek Peek..

Today I got surprised by a Facebook post by the Zwarte Cross. They posted about the children's book they're working on. I just recently made some illustrations for one of their stories, which was really fun to do!! Didn't want to share this yet, but today they happened to post this:

Zwartecross

Klaas Jan Huntelaar, bedankt voor je toffe verhaal voor het Achterhoeks kinderboek. Cool dat je daar tijd voor hebt vrijgemaakt in Brazilië! Nu is alles klaar en morgen gaat het boek naar de drukker ‪#‎drukdrukdruk‬!

@Hunter: Zo is het geworden in de vormgeving: cool hè? Als je ons land nog mag verdedigen: knap d’r op!

Yes, there's my name! (..right under the name of a very famous dutch soccer player by the way :-) And although it only shows a tiny part of one of my drawings, I feel proud!
The book will be released in the last week of July. Can't wait to see the end result. Would you like to see it too? I'll keep you all informed and share some nice pics!

Taking flight!

Soooo happy to make my first post today! I'm really looking forward to share my creative adventures here with you! Hope you'll want to be my travel companion on my journey in doing what I love. I'd love to hear your comments in Dutch or English, whatever feels comfortable for you!

The upcoming months I'll be posting about my adventures in MATS Bootcamp, ABSPD Module 2 (starting in October), some exciting assignments and other creative stuff that keeps me happy and busy! I'll tell you about my big dreams and how I going to make them happen...Okay, that's quite a announcement, you'll probably think. And you're right. But for for the first time I'm going to be bold and brave and just say it: I'm going for it, for my own happiness, choosing to do what I love and share  it with the world instead of stuffing my attick with it :-) So, now that's said and done, let's take flight! Happy reading for all of you! And I hope to hear from you soon!

Working hard!

I'm working really hard on this blog making it my own perfect happy place. Please come back soon and see it's doors opened for you! Thanks!