Around here lately (and a little blog break coming up)

Here are some random pictures from the last months, because that is my life too. Well, maybe not too random. I do like to focus on the positive when I take my pictures. It keeps me grateful. :-)

A home made latte and a good book.

That's the good book I was reading. Highly recommended.

Visited the local music and art festival Into The Great Wide Open.

Something to aim for.

I hadn't bought new artsy books in forever, so these were very welcome.

Spooky assisting in my morning art routine. Such a helpful fellow. And handsome too!

Visiting the Drents Museum, among others a beautiful exhibit about Iran.

A sunrise in black and white.

The local beach pavilion.

A beautifully handmade leather cover for a hobonichi weeks planner (for next year), made by Galen Leather.

"Okay then, you sleep on the left so I can draw on the right."

Another wild and crazy morning at my house.

Journaling at my coffee table.

Another watercolour mosaic in progress in the studio.

Clouds over the Wadden Sea.

Imaginary flowers in my journal.

The first day of autumn brought the first autumn storm and some beautiful skies.

So now it's time to collect some new experiences and take a blog break. I'll be going to my sister's house again for a little free vacation and no doubt I will be walking a lot and taking pictures as I go. I will not be taking care of her dog this time, so I can go out to different places. No idea yet exactly what I will do, but I'm sure I will fill my time just fine.

Anyway, this means I will be off blog for about two weeks, but I'm sure I will have stuff to share when I get back. Until then I wish you all a wonderful and artsy time!

Pattern Variations

Patterns are my addiction (well, patterns and chocolate, but let's focus on the artsy stuff, shall we?) and I don't think this will ever go away. I like drawing doodles and freeform 'nonsense', but I think I like using grids most of all. I think it's the control freak in me. So it's no surprise I keep coming back to my Moleskine XL squared notebook which I am filling to the brim with pattern after pattern after pattern.

One fun thing to do is to fill several pages with the same colour combination but different style patterns, just to see what the effect will be.

Here are six pages I recently filled in purples and pinks:

All these were done in felt tip pens as you can also see in the photos. My Stabilo68 pens and the smooth paper of the notebook really agree with each other, so I keep using them. In fact over the years I have had to replace quite a lot of colours already so I could keep going.

The above notebook is slowly coming to an end. I have six pages to go and then it will be full. It's always a bit exciting to (almost) finish a book you have worked in for so long (two years), so I look forward to fully filling it up. I'll keep you posted!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Decorating the journal

My journal is for writing first. I write almost daily. I love the act of writing, especially with a fountain pen, but it also keeps me sane and helps clear my mind. I may skip a day here and there, but if I don't journal for a while it is always a tell tale sign that things are not going well with me. If that happens picking it up again is also the thing that gets me back to myself the quickest.

I also like it when my journal looks fun and is full of imagery and decoration. It makes it feel like a cosy safe place I can always turn to. I like the way this makes my journal feel and look like a travel journal of daily life. Life is a bit of a journey after all.

Because I write way faster and more than I could ever decorate, not every spread is elaborately done. But sometimes I do like to sit down and just do a bit of a pretty layout here and there.

Here are some pics of when I did just that.

These were done in my current journal which is a Leuchtturm1917 dotted notebook in A5 size. I have been using these books for over a year now and this is my fourth and it is almost full. I'm way behind on peeks into my journals, but I will do a journal post soon, promise. In any case I still love these journals and the fifth one is already waiting to be used after this one is full.

And in case you're wondering what it looks like when I do pages like this, here you go:

It's kind of funny: I have two worktables for arts and crafts in my house, but when it comes to the journal I work best when sitting on the couch and working on my coffee table. It think it is because it's such an informal thing to do to me. The journal is the thing I always continue no matter what else happens in my life. It's my safe place if you will and my safe place needs to be comfortable above anything.

Hope you enjoyed this peek into my journaling process and wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Morning Mosaic #16 - step by step

Last April I decided to stop my morning art practice for an indefinite while, so I could get a bit more sleep and distance and just see how I would like it to go without. I had been doing my morning art for about three years by then, which I still think of as quite an accomplishment.

For those of you who don't know: I set aside about thirty minutes every morning right after getting up to work on some specific art project. It was almost a form of meditation for me and I enjoyed it very much, but it felt good to stop for a while too and just sit back.

Anyway, my last morning art project was doing what I call watercolour mosaics, which is pretty much what it sounds like: mosaic patterns in watercolour. I recently realised I had not shown you the last of those paintings yet, so I thought I would make up for that today and show you the process of mosaic number sixteen.

Every picture represents one half hour morning session, so this was a full week of morning art. Differences in colours have to do with different lighting circumstances.

So this was the last morning mosaic for a while. I have worked in this sketchbook after that, but not as morning art. When I have some more newer pages done I will of course show them to you.

Also, very recently I have been trying to get back into my morning art routine in general. It's still very fresh and frail and I'm not making any promises yet that I will continue with it. Still, for now it's nice to slowly get back to it, because as much as I enjoy the extra sleep, I do miss my routine a little. We'll see how it goes and I will keep you posted.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day. 

Tall Ships Races 2018 - abstracts, lines and close-ups

In my last post I told you about my trip to the Tall Ships Races in Harlingen at the beginning of August.

Being around all those ships and the harbor in general brought out my big love of lines and details and I took a whole lot of pictures just because of that fascination. Just the shape of masts, the lines of ropes, or the way little details looked up close is an endless source of beauty for me.

So here is a series of photos I took that day that shows things in a bit of a different light.

I feel like some of these pics could be turned into really interesting abstract paintings or drawings, but for now I'll just like them for wat they are.

Hope you like them too and wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!