The last of the Adori, well...for now anyway

It's already been three months since I finished my previous journal, the Adori, but I had not shown you images of the last insert yet, so that's what I will do today.

The Adori is a handmade traveler's notebook that I ordered custom made from the wonderfully talented Anja Verkooij last year. It holds inserts the size of moleskine cahiers, but instead of those I used Tinne+Mia notebooks that have the same size, but much much better paper.

In previous posts I have shown you spreads from the first two inserts and today I thought I'd show you spreads from the third and last insert. So here we go:

Now the journal is full I have put it aside for a while, but the cool thing about these traveler's notebooks is of course that you can reuse them, so at some point I am going to remove the current inserts and fill it up with new inserts so I can start all over again. I actually already bought two more sets of the Tinne+Mia notebooks, because I loved them so much.

So this is probably not the last you've seen of this Adori journal. You know however how much I crave variety when it comes to my journals so right now I am working in something completely different. But that's for another post!

If you want to check out these beautiful Adoris you can find more info on Anja's website here. And if you are curious about the Tinne+Mia notebooks, you can find them here. On the site it says they are A5 but they are slightly less wide than that and exactly the size of moleskine cahiers.

Hope you enjoyed this peek in my journal and wish you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

Walking Pictures

Here are some photographs taken on my many walks over the past weeks. I prefer to walk alone, but I don't mind taking you with me vicariously on the blog, so enjoy!

All of these were taken on my beautiful island except one. Guess which one, haha.
That one was taken on a day trip to the city of Leeuwarden. Sometimes you gotta get off the island and join the civilized world!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day and hope you had a lovely Easter weekend!

Doodle drawings

I am so enjoying these big doodles that I do from time to time. They are completely abstract and have no deeper meaning whatsoever except bringing me joy and hopefully some pleasure to those who view them. I love playing with colour and patterns and thus making an attractive composition.

I think in the end that's what most of my art is about, just making something that is pleasing to my eyes and a bit of a puzzle to work out when making it. A play with shapes and colours. It must be why I love patterns so much.. They are just soothing.

Here are three abstract doodles on A4 paper that I have done recently:

I still have to smile about that last one. It's the first thing I did in my studio after I got back from my Texel vacation. Remember how I only took black pens with me on that vacation? Well, this was how I got over the lack of colour that I experienced those weeks! :-)

I really still want to make a huge doodle painting on canvas or wood at some point, but I haven't really had the chance to try it yet (or the courage?). It will come, eventually, I just know it. Give me time.

Hope you're all making art that makes you happy or doing something else that brings a smile to your face. Have a wonderful and artsy day.

PS If you want to know how these doodles come into being, I did a little step by step a while back that you can find here.

The last of the Morning Paintings

About two months ago I did my very last Morning Painting. For almost exactly a year I painted every morning right after getting up en before breakfast, mostly in gouache. After that year I now have seven sketchbooks and 330 paintings. Why not 365? Because of life. I did not paint during my vacations, I did not paint when I had the flu and once or twice I skipped because of practical reasons. I'm not a painting machine thank you very much!

Anyway, here are the last ten paintings for your viewing pleasure, no. 321 to 330:

#321 - Flowers

#322 - Grids in  Squares

#323 - Connect the Dots

#324 - Plaid

#325 - Plaid

#326 - Plaid

#327 - Crossed Diamonds

#328 - Flowers

#329 - Star Pattern

#330 - The End

After that last painting (right before my Texel vacation in January) it was really strange to wake up the next day and not go to the studio to paint. Hmmm...maybe I had become a bit of a painting machine after all? ;-)

I will do a separate post in which I will look back on the whole experience of painting every morning and what it did for me. It will take some time to put it all in words. It was a wonderful experience I can tell you that much!

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

From the Picture Book

My Picture Book is a very simple scrapbook in which I simply put any image that speaks to me. I also refer to it as my Printerest (you know like 'printed Pinterest').

I usually collect images for weeks and then sit down for a few hours and paste a new bunch in, often decorating with one of my many many many washi tapes. It's fun to do and it's fun to look at.

Here are some of my latest pages in this book:

The book combines a lot of imagery and art by other people and I try to source them as best as I can. They are for inspiration only. Mixed in among them however are also some of my own photographs. Often (not always) if an image isn't sourced it is one of my own. If you're curious about some of the images you can click on the image and probably read my handwriting where I put down the names of the artists.

When it comes to this book I'm not really concerned very much with copyright. This is not art, this is not anything really but me collecting pretty pictures. I think this is the most basic form of scrapbooking there is.

Thanks for taking a peek and I hope you are being inspired wherever you are. Have a good weekend all!