Morning Paintings #121-130

Still painting every morning, usually before breakfast. I say 'usually' because every now and then now it is a warm day and I want to get my morning walk in extra early, so then I walk before I paint. But oh well, as long as the painting gets done, who cares? ;-)

I'm proud to say that since my Texel vacation in March I have not skipped even one day and I think that's pretty cool.

Here are ten more paintings:

#121 - Scale Pattern

#122 - Abstract Flowers

#123 - Big Monochrome Flowers

#124 - Rainbow Circles

#125 - Flower Pattern

#126 - Pattern

#127 - Pattern

#128 - A Bit Of Colourful Nonsense

#129 - Flowers On Red

#130 - Mail Order Catalogue Girl

With painting number 130 I finished my third sketchbook full of morning paintings! Here it is standing up loud and proud: 

I'm happily working in sketchbook number four now and nearing my 150th painting. It is so good to know that even if I don't do anything else at all this year I will at least have a lot of paintings to my name. This means a lot to somebody who is always wondering if she is productive enough. (Yes, I know, I need help, haha.)

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Doodledoodledoo

I had not worked in my doodle book for a while, so recently I thought I would fill a couple of pages with my nonsense drawings in ink and then colour them in with coloured pencils.

Sometimes I like to put some colour on the background and sometimes I like to leave the background as is. And sometimes....sometimes I just like to fill every last little spot on a page with colour!

All these drawings measure 25 x 25 cm (that's 10 x 10 inches for you non metric people).

In this book I only fill the right pages even though I like the look of filling both pages much better. The problem is that coloured pencil can rub off on the previous page if you start working on the next page. So better safe than sorry.

Doodling like this is a strange joy. It is relaxing, but it also takes a lot of patience, especially the last one.  I suppose if I worked on smaller pages it would not be such a hassle, but...I kind of like the challenge of filling a somewhat bigger page. I say somewhat bigger, because I've seen people online fill entire walls with their doodling, so basically I'm just an amateur, haha.

Hope you are doing something fun in your sketchbook and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day!

Walking on Instagram

Since a few months I've been back on Instagram. I left last year, but I started to miss it so I decided to get back to it. I'm thinking it doesn't take all that much extra time since I can directly post my Instagram entries on Facebook and that way I get two for one.

Anyway, through Instagram I daily post my morning paintings, but also a little wrap up of my walks and the latter is what this post is about. I recently discovered the PicFrame app, which I mostly use for printing with my Selphy printer (aah, what a lovely invention that is), but it's also handy to put more than one photograph into a single image to share on social media.

Since I usually bring my phone on my walks I always end up taking pictures along the way and now often I will pick four of my favorites and put them together into one image so I can show the world what I encounter on my walks.

I thought you, my blogsy people, might enjoy these little wrap ups of my walks too, so that's why I'm sharing some of them here.

All these sets are from different walks. As you can see I'm pretty spoiled when it comes to beautiful surroundings. Taking pictures like this is not just to show the world where I live and share pretty pictures, but also and mostly to keep myself aware of how fortunate I am. I think I do a lot of my photography and also my blogging for that reason: to stay in touch with my own life and practice a sense of gratitude for it. It helps keep my eyes open for the good stuff.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my regular walks and I hope you are keeping your eyes open for the beauty that surrounds you. If you want to follow me on Instagram you can click here. Would love to see you there!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Morning Paintings #111-120

Time for another batch of morning paintings.
Still going strong, still loving it. ;-)

#111 - Three big flowers

#112 - Nonsense

#113 - Symmetry

#114 - Tree

#115 - Spring

#116 - Nonsense again

#117 - Flowers on lilac

#118 - Flower pattern

#119 - Fan Flowers (inspired by the shape of my electrical fan!)

#120 - Abstract flowers

In this series of paintings I really started to enjoy drawing flowers with black paint. I also love that you can go back in with a wet brush and create some gray colours to fill in some of the white. It gives a bit more life to the paintings.

Also in general I am really enjoying drawing with my paintbrush. I love the feel of it and the unpredictability of the lines. I feel these morning paintings are really starting to teach me some control over my brush strokes, not too much though, I like the surprises. ;-)

Hope you are all happily making or arting or doing whatever else lights up your life.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Patterns!

My moleskine Pattern Book is slowly coming towards its end. I have six pages left to fill. I already have another moleskine sketchbook in waiting to replace it, but I'm also thinking of getting one of those Leuchtturm 1917 books with vague dots in a grid, because then I could get my patterns more evenly spaced without help from any tools. We'll see.

Here are eight more patterns I drew in my Pattern Book:

I'm sorry about the glare on some of the right pages. Circumstances were not really ideal for photographing this book, but at least you can still see the colours and all. ;-)

All these were done with pitt big brush markers. If you want a marker that works well in your moleskine sketchbook (which has a thick paper that resists some markers a little and watercolour a lot) then the pitts are the way to go. They don't bleed and the colours are beautiful, waterproof and lightfast.

I thought about leaving the last two pages in just black and white, because they looked really cool that way, but I decided against it in the end. Still it made me think that maybe I should experiment a little with just black and white pattern drawings or doodles. This is one of the great things about making artsy stuff. One thing can lead to another, which leads to yet another, and so on and so forth.

I hope your swimming in artsy ideas in your neck of the woods. If you want to, tell me about them!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day.

From the Picture Book

My Picture Book is exactly what it claims to be: a book of pictures. I collect images that speak to me and paste them down in this simple scrapbook. I love looking at them and they inspire me in ways not even I can pinpoint exactly.

Here are some spreads I've filled lately:

I love how you can see my current fascinations reflected in this book. Things like hex signs and fraktur painting for instance. Things I had never heard about before and am now absolutely in love with. And how about those dotted stones by Elspeth McLean? Sigh...

I don't copy other people's work, but sometimes this book can really inspire me for my morning paintings for instance. And that's what the Picture Book is all about: pure inspiration.

Wishing you all a wonderful and inspiring artsy day!

Morning Paintings #101-110

Every morning right after I've gotten dressed en right before breakfast I walk into my studio and get my little A5 photoalbum out and my gouache and I paint. I could make a long statement about it and get deep and philosophical, but basically this is all it is. And maybe that is all it needs to be, maybe that's the only reason I can keep it up. Getting up early is not easy for me, but the painting somehow is. Not that I'm always tremendously inspired. Not that I make masterpieces. Sometimes I really have no idea what I'm doing. But the page gets filled and it's amazing how that way sketchbooks get filled too. This really is a painting practice, nothing more and nothing less.

Anyway, here are paintings 101 to 110.

#101 - Abstract pattern

#102 - Mail order catalogue girl

#103 - Flowers

#104 - Scale pattern

#105 - Experiment with masking fluid

#106 - Flower pattern

#107 - Tribal nonsense

#108 - Abstract code

#109 - Mail order catalogue girl

#110 - Dots and circles

With this batch I started some 'nonsense' paintings. They remind me of strange tribal or alien languages that nobody can decipher anymore. I don't know why and I don't know where they come from, but they are a lot of fun to do.

Hope you enjoyed these paintings and hope you are doing something artsy and wonderful wherever you are.