Let me take you to Ameland! - part one of three

From March 14 to 21 I went on a vacation to Ameland, which is one of the other Dutch Wadden Sea Islands (I myself live on the island of Vlieland).

It was my first visit to this island and I fell in love. In three posts I will try to give you an impression of the beauty of this place, so you can fall in love too. ;-)

Enjoy!

Back from Ameland

Hello my blogsy people! After a two week absence I'm back again, yay! I wish I could say I missed you all, but I was too busy relaxing and enjoying myself, haha. Still, it's good to be back.

I had myself a wonderful vacation both weather wise and surroundings wise. It was one of those vacations where time feels endless and everything is relaxing and calm. I feel like I've been away for months.

The island of Ameland was almost surprisingly beautiful. I don't know why I was so surprised, but the thing is that when people talked to me about it, it was usually as if of all the Dutch Wadden Sea Islands it was the least attractive (which is not the same as NOT attractive by the way). Well, I stand corrected, what an amazing place! I absolutely fell in love with it.

The day I went there was a very foggy dreary day and the forecast was that it would be that way all week. I'm not so scared of dreary weather, but I do like it to stay a little dry so I can at least go for long walks, so I was a tad bit worried.

Still, the fog made for some beautiful pictures before I even arrived. 

These were taken in Holwerd, which is the place where the ferry to Ameland leaves.

I wasn't even on the island yet and things were beautiful already.

The forecasters were wrong by the way. It was not very warm, but I got so much sun that I now look like I went to a tropical island instead of the one I did go to. I actually got a little sunburned.

My appartment was very nice as well. It was in an appartment building very near the beach (about a 150 meters walk), which made it really easy to go for a little beach walk at night and watch the sunset, which I did several times.

The place had everything I could possibly need and was very comfortable. Especially that big couch. I wouldn't mind having one of those at home! I sat there a lot.

Of course going to this place I'd never been before I took my camera with me to every place I went and I took hundreds of pictures. So, as you might have expected, I will be giving  little slide show of my favorite images in the coming  three posts. Just think of it as my way of taking you with me.

Hope you will enjoy the trip and for now I wish you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

Branches (and a vacation)

Sometimes when I'm on one of my walks I get fascinated by something specific and then I can't stop taking pictures of it.

Last weekend this happened when I looked at the silhouettes that empty tree branches make against the sky. Such lovely lines. I took a bunch of shots, so this is just a selection.

 

The branches looked like fascinating drawings to me, so naturally I had to sketch some as well. This is a pencil sketch in a big Dylusions Journal that I will tell you more about in a future post. The fun thing is with silhouettes you don't have to worry about things like shading and perspective.

  

Now for some good news (well for me anyway). I will be going on vacation tomorrow! That's right. I booked a last minute (cheaper) to one of the other Wadden Sea Islands again. This time one I haven't been before: Ameland. It is my mission to visit all the Dutch islands for a vacation. Last year around this time I went to Schiermonnikoog and next year I hope to visit Texel. But this year it's Ameland.

I will be there for a week, armed with my big camera and walking boots, so expect a lot of pictures when I return!

I'll be back somewhere in the week of the 24th. Can't say exactly when, cause picture taking with my actual camera takes some editing and downsizing for the blog.

If you want to follow me as I am there you can do so on Facebook, because I will be posting daily there with pictures from my phone.

So hope to see you all in about two weeks and wish you a wonderful and artsy time until then!

Sunrise

On my workdays I start work at 7am and, since the days are slowly lengthening, right now it's around sunrise when I walk to work. On lucky days when the weather is good and the tide is just right that means I get to see things like this:

Hope you're all having a wonderful and artsy Sunday!

From The Notebook

My current everyday journal, The Notebook, is filling up nicely. It's not a pretty art journal with interesting layouts, but a much more direct book for jotting down thoughts, pasting in everyday ephemera and my own pictures and maybe draw a little. 

It's a big mismatch of all sorts of stuff and that's what I like about it.

Here's a selection of spreads. I'm not showing you all pages from this book, because most of it is just writing. It's nice to write again with abandon and without worrying about backgrounds and imagery.

Hope you enjoy this peek in my daily journal and wish you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

From the Fodder Book

This book was initially meant to be filled with work inspired by the book 'Journal Fodder 365', but as always I found working with prompts and assignments is just not my thing. 

So now the book is basically becoming a vessel for what I call 'watercolour nonsense'. That's just doodling with watercolour. I love doing that.

Recently I also started adding collage to these paintings and it's opening up a whole new batch of ideas for patterns that are a combination of different materials. Can't wait to see where it all will lead to.

Anyway, here's four pages of wonderful watercolour nonsense! :-)