Colored pencil gradients in my black book

I started a black papered dotted journal/sketchbook a while back and it is very interesting to  play in it with different materials. After doing a few patterns in gel pen I decided to try some colored pencil.

I have the full set of 120 polychromos from Faber Castell and I love playing with the gradients of the colors as they appear in the box. So I did a few spreads just following the order as they are presented by the manufacturer. It was also a good way to test every color on black paper.

The effect of colored pencil on black paper is really beautiful, but also very difficult to photograph correctly. At least the pictures give an impression of the reality of it, but in real life it is actually even more lovely.

In any case working in this book is interesting and I look forward to exploring and experimenting with it further. 

Hope you are changing things up from time to time and wishing your a wonderful and artsy day. 

Around here lately

Time for another selection of everyday pictures from my everyday life as seen through my eyes and my camera phone.

A lonely hollyhock in our main street.

Signs of autumn.

After a year of saving I splurged on an iPad pro! Damn, those things are expensive! But I love it!

Less of a splurge, but still lovely, new slippers.

My journal kit for going on vacation at the beginning of October.

A Sunday morning, a cat and a magazine, what more do you need?

Picking out inks for fall journaling.

A very dark morning begged me to light all my candles.

When you can't sleep because your thoughts are driving you crazy.

Waiting time put to good use by sitting in the library in Leeuwarden. It used to be a prison!

I took part in a three day workshop program that was put up to make up for the huge craft supply fair Kreadoe not happening this year. It was fun, but I hope next year sister and I can go again.

Early for a cancer checkup, so I sat in the sun for a while. This is the train station of Leeuwarden. All was well by the way. Next check up in February.

The supervisor at work in the early morning.

Life is good in general, but I have to admit that sometimes corona measures are starting to annoy me. I would like to go on day trips again, visit family and friends, go shopping for fun instead of necessities, and just feel a little less confined. But then again I am lucky to live on an island with lots of nature and space to be outside and all my needs are basically met. And of course I'm also lucky that so far corona itself has not found me or my loved ones. It could be worse. 

Hope you are all doing okay in your neck of the woods and that you are managing to keep appreciating the good stuff. Wishing you a wonderful and artsy day.

From the collage book

When I want to take a break from the many patterns and other nonsense I draw I usually turn to collage.

Sometimes I will make cards to use as snail mail and sometimes I will work in a scrapbook that I dedicate especially to my collages. The book has colorful pages, so I already have an interesting background to start with. 

Here are some collages that I did in the last couple of weeks:

The mixing and matching in collage making always makes me happy. I never plan out my collages, I just take it one step at a time and something comes together organically. I really like that process.

Hope you are doing something where the process makes you happy, whatever the result, and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day.

A quartet of mosaics

I am really enjoying drawing what I like to call 'quartets' on my iPad. Basically it's a small series of four pattern or mosaic drawings that form a set but can also be seen separate. 

Here is one I finished a while ago that was more about mosaics than repeated patterns. You could also almost look upon them as square mandalas if you will. 

For these I used the 6B pencill brush that comes with Procreate (which is the app I use for drawing on the iPad). I like using brushes where you can see the lines and the work involved. I feel they have more life to them than the very digital looking ones, even though I do use those sometimes as well. 

And as I've said many times before: I like doing the work. I did use a grid guide, for placing the pieces of these mosaics (think squared paper), but other than that everything was done by hand. Procreate offers options where I could have done one quarter of a drawing and then let it fill in the rest through mirroring those lines, but that just doesn't sit right with me. I think even digitally I want the feeling I get with drawing on paper. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. ;-)

Hope you have something that you could do for hours on end without getting bored with it, and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day.

A week on the island; part two of two

We are nearing the end of my slideshow of walks I took during my two week vacation in the beginning of October. One week in sisters house, one week in my house. 

Here are the last pictures of those weeks I have to show you, all taken during my week on my own beautiful island Vlieland.

"Live by the rythm of the sea."

By now it's already been three weeks ago since my vacation and I'm back at work again almost like it never happened. I sometimes want to hold on to my vacations so bad, but time moves on despite ourselves. 

Luckily this place is my home and I can go on walks here regularly, but...ah....that feeling of your time being fully your own, I do so love that. And I'm always 'time greedy'. If that's not an expression, it should be. ;-)

Hope you are grabbing as much time of your own as you possibly can and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day.

A week on the island; part one of two

So after my week in sisters house, I still had one more week off work which I spent at home on my island. You can say I had two staycations of which only one was actually in my own home. 

I did pretty much the same as I did away from home: writing, reading, drawing, napping and walking. The latter is of course the subject of this and my next post.

 Here are some pictures of Vlieland in the second week of October.

 

The weather during this second vacation week was definitely somewhat better than at my sisters, but still quite changeable. The other difference of course was that I had no dog to take with me and didn't have to take her into account, so I could walk a bit further and that was nice. 

And being away from home,  no matter how beautiful it was, always makes me appreciate the island more. All these wide open spaces without any traffic are just delightful.

Hope you are finding some beauty in your neighbourhood and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day.