Morning Art

Morning art is pretty much an everyday part of my life now. I've been doing it for over three years and I feel it has become as 'normal' to me as journaling. Just a thing I do. There's little discipline involved anymore except for the part where I have to get up extra early to be able to do it. I am not a morning person!
The drawing/arting itself doesn't really take much, I enjoy it and things I enjoy I am glad to do. It's nice to have some routines in place. They are an anchor in the turmoil that is sometimes daily life, not to mention the turmoil that usually goes on in my mind, haha.

My current morning art 'project' is an A5 sized grid notebook that I got for cheap on Aliexpress. I use it to draw patterns (what else?) in felttip pens and it is very very slow going. I work on it for half an hour every morning, so a spread can take anything from three days to more than a week.

Here are four spreads that are finished.

This is one of my personal favorites of all time!

I try to use the same colour combinations in two spreads in a row and I try to let the pages be a variation of each other. I like how it looks. I also like how patient I am with these. It really is a work of love and meditation.

I hope you are doing something you can summon up endless patience for and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Texel in five walks - Fifth walk

My last day on Texel I made a very nice walk through a mostly snowy landscape. The wind was again ice cold and the atmosphere gray, but it was a lighter gray than the day before.

My walk started at Dijkmanshuizen, the middle of nowhere where I had finished the day before and ended in Den Burg. Officially the walk around the island ends where it began at 't Horntje near the ferry, but that would be too far for me, so I did not do the last few kilometers of the route. That will have to be done another time.

The last walk took me through my favorite town on Texel, which is Oudeschild. I'm not sure why it is my favorite, but I think it has something to do with the harbour it holds and the atmosphere of a real fishing town.

Anyway, here's an impression of the last walk of my Texel vacation:

I had to walk a few kilometers along the dyke again in even colder winds than the day before.

The marina at Oudeschilld, quite empty this time of year.

And a bit further on there's the actual harbour with it's docks and fishing trawlers.

This windmill is part of the museum Kaap Skil, which I also visited.

I told these sheep they were supermodels and they agreed.

Here you can see the slight hilly landscape that is called Hoge Berg near Den Burg.

And so ends our walking tour of Texel. Even now I am still a bit homesick for it, because it's such a wonderful way to live to just walk and take pictures all day without any of the worries, obligations and chores that are part of everyday life.

Still I'm lucky I get to go on these walking trips from time to time and it really recharges me to do so.

I hope you enjoyed walking along with me these past few posts and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Texel in five walks - Fourth walk

After a day of snow and rest both the weather and the landscape changed. From mostly sunny frosty weather and national park views I came to walk in icy winds and flat fields and along dykes and small towns.

Because of the snow day I skipped a part after the light house and started my walk a bit more south at Prins Hendrik, which is basically a spot right behind the dyke in the middle of nowhere. I walked either along or parallel to that dyke southwards along towns called Oost and Oosterend onto  Dijkmanshuizen, which is basically exactly like Prins Hendrik, but more south.

Here's an impression of that walk:

A bit further down this road near that building is where my walk started.

Walking on the outside of the dyke with the ice cold wind in your face was....um...ice cold!

This is the town called Oost.

Huge flocks of geese kept going up and settling down again.

And this is Oosterend, I had the best piece of apple pie in my life in a lovely pub in this town.

This is a new piece of dyke away from the old one which left an interesting landscape with several ponds.

At the back you see the old dyke and on the right the new one.

As a little bonus I also  have a video that I made that day of the flying geese around one of the sheds in the fields. The video mostly only captures the sound the geese make with their beaks/throats, but in real life it was the sound of their wings that was breathtakingly beautiful. I wish I could have captured that better.

I think of all days this one was the most desolate and gray. But I like desolate and gray quite a bit too, so I didn't mind. I think this was also the shortest walk of my vacation. The bus stop turned out to be closer than I expected so I figured I would just walk that bit more the next day.

And that next day will be our next post and the last walk of this vacation. Until then I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.