Morning Art

Making morning art is one of the continuing good practices of my artsy life. Every morning for one half hour before anything else happens and life takes over I get to draw in my squared notebook/sketchbook and slowly, very slowly fill page after page with colours and shapes. The pleasure of it is the only reason I can keep it up, because getting up early for it is something that gives me no pleasure at all!

Here's a few spreads from this sketchbook:

These spreads take a long time to finish. My personal record is 19 half hour morning sessions for one spread! That's almost three weeks! That spread will be in a next morning art post, but my point is that this is slow art and meditation.

I have been in this sketchbook since October and have filled about thirty two pages in that time (sixteen spreads). I do skip a day here and there, but not many. So if you are very result oriented and restless, this might not be the art form for you, haha. For me it is the ultimate relaxation before the day starts, so I love it.

Hope you enjoyed this peek into my morning art sketchbook and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Walking Pictures

Just some photographs I took while walking. Because it's important to keep appreciating the beautiful island I  have the privilege to live on.

Doesn't the dam look like there's a huge crocodile slithering into the ocean? 

This was during a winter storm as you can see by the overflowing tide.

Signs of spring.

I saw many beautiful sunrises on the way to work. 

I hope you enjoy the beauty of wherever you live (and don't you dare to tell me there isn't any :-) ) and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Colourful Collages

Of all the artsy stuff I like to do my biggest love over the past years has no doubt been drawing and painting patterns. In fact I love it so much that all the other stuff doesn't get done nearly as much as I would love to, simply because there's only so many hours in the day and also, someone needs to bring home a paycheck, and when you live alone that someone is always you. Someone should really invent a way around this. ;-)

But I have a truckload of sketchbooks devoted to other types of art than just patterns and every now and then I actually dust them off and work in them.

One such book is a colourful 20x20 cm (8x8 inches) scrapbook I bought at Paperchase many moons ago in which I do collage. Recently I sat down with this book again and did four collages in two sittings. Here's the result:

The black and white ones were quite a challenge for someone who likes colour as much as me. As you can see I didn't even fully manage to keep them black and white, a little beige was added here and there.

All these are mixed media, with  materials ranging from coloured pencil and paint markers to magazine clippings and washi tape and I even used some stencils on these. I love the mixing and matching of different imagery and materials to achieve a layout that I find pleasing to the eye. There's no rhyme or reason tot this. I don't plan out my collages, they just kind of happen organically. If I planned them they just wouldn't work for me. We all have our own process I  guess, and for me the process is usually 'well, now I did this, what do I do next?' until I feel I'm done. ;-)

I hope you liked this peek into my collage book and wish you all a wonderfull and artsy day. 

From the Moleskine XL

So, I have a whole house all to myself. In this house I have a studio, which is simply the biggest bedroom upstairs. It's marvelous and I like to refer to it as my treasure room. I also have a worktable in my kitchen that I mainly use for journaling. When it comes to art supplies and places to use them I am one spoiled woman and I am very aware of this.

And yet, despite all the above, my favorite place to make art is still my couch. Maybe this is why one of the sketchbooks I work in most is my Molesekine XL Cahier with grid paper. All I need is the book and some felt tip pens and I'm ready to go.
I can sit with my feet up, the book in my lap (sometimes there's a cat between my lap and the book) and draw for hours. And while I do so, I listen to podcasts and audio books and life doesn't get much better than that.

Here are some spreads from the Moleskine XL that were done exactly like that:

The gray in this last one is actually a metallic green, but that's impossible to photograph.

I don't know if you can tell, but in the second and last picture the opposite pages are actually sort of inversions of each other. I really like the effect this gives to the whole spread.

All these were done with my trusted Stabilo 68 pens. The metallic colours of these pens are new and quite cool, but as stated above, they don't really show up in the picture. I do wish Stabilo would put out even more regular colours. There are about 48 now and I would love an even larger selection. Did I already mention how spoiled I am?

I hope you enjoyed this peek in my sketchbook and that you have a comfortable place to create as well.
Have yourself a wonderful and artsy day!

Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor that I really like. I first found out about his existence through a huge chandelier type sculpture of his that hangs from the very high ceiling in the entrance hall of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

It made an impression on me for two reasons:
1) it's fabulous (duh)
2) it's scary
The scary part is me being afraid that one day the ceiling is going to give and that glass thing is going to crash down and kill people. So I felt slightly uncomfortable standing underneath it and preferred looking at it from a different angle on one of the higher floors. ;-)

So when the Groninger Museum decided to do a big exhibit of Chihuly's work I knew I had to go. Luckily Groningen is near enough that I can go back and forth within a day. The practical problem with living on an island is that many things take at least one overnight stay at family, friends or a hotel, unless it's in the north of The Netherlands. Groningen is in the North, so no need to make extensive plans, just catch the early morning ferry and go.

Today I'd like to share an impression of the exhibit, because I loved it so much. Photographs don't do it justice, but at least you get an idea of this mans skill, diversity, love of colour and even (yay!) patterns.

I wish there had been more drawings.

I took a lot of pictures of  pattern details like this.

This was my favorite room. It's consisted of one huge man sized glass garden!

For those who are close enough it's definitely worth traveling to Groningen for. The exhibit still runs until the 5th of May. For those of you who live too far away or don't have time: I hope you enjoyed coming with me virtually. If I can manage it, I myself hope to revisit the exhibit before it expires. We'll see how it goes.

For now I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.