The Picture Book

I have tons and tons of sketchbooks, blank books and scrapbooks around the house and, believe it or not, a lot of them are in use. Some you see come by here often (like the Fodder Book or the Pattern Book) and others not so much (like the sketchbook I use to practice portraits or the one for beautiful ladies in beautiful dresses). I am scattered over lots and lots of books and I actually like that, because it feels like no matter what I want to do I always have a place to go. There's just some places I visit more often than others, haha.

One of the books I've started to use recently is a very simple scrapbook. I have taken up collecting images that speak to me or that I may want to use as inspiration for art or drawing and I thought it would be nice to put them together in a no nonsense type of book. No embellishments, no artsy stuff, just stuff I like. For all intents and purposes it's just a picture book. That's what I call it too, The Picture Book.

I don't know if you can tell, but it's a mix of images I find in magazines, on the internet and my own photographs. I try to source everything by putting the name of the artist next to the pictures, but this is not always possible and I'm not too bothered by it, since this is just for personal use. In a way this whole thing reminds me of a sort of pinterest on paper. Printerest!

There's no rhyme or reason to how the images are organized, it has more to do with size than anything else. If an image fits in the remaining space it will get stuck down and if it doesn't it will move on to the next page.  I like the complete mismatch of things. It leaves my eye to just wander around the imagery and helps my mind to dream a little. 

I think just in these few images you can tell my love for patterns, girl's portraits, and flowers and such. I like that. I also like to see my own images mingled with those of other people. In short I find this whole thing inspiring.

For someone who tossed away her pinterest account this is the perfect solution and it feels much more tangible this way too. I used to pin a lot, but never really looked at them again, but with this I can just leaf through things directly.

Just thought I might share this in case it might give one of you an idea to try this as well. It's simple and it's cheap and it's quite relaxing to do as well.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Pages from Flora

Flora, the current journal, is in full use. I love her size and I love her paper even though neither is ideal (too big, and not perfectly suited for wet media and markers). Here are some of her latest pages.

I have to smile when I see how when it comes to this journal I use words like 'she' and 'her' instead of 'it'. As if it's a person. I think it's the name, even though I didn't mean it as a girls name at the time. I just meant 'flora' as in the world of flowers, plants and trees. Oh well, the journal works in mysterious ways I guess. ;-)

Have a wonderful day all!

Good times were had last weekend

Good times were had the past weekend. Of course for me weekends are long and shouldn't really be called weekends. But I can't seem to stop doing that anyway. I'm off work every Friday to Monday since I started working less.

I spent most of Friday in the studio playing, among other things, with my masking liquid markers:

This weekend it was time for the annual ITGWO festival. ITGWO stands for Into The Great Wide Open and is a very popular music and arts festival that is spread out over several places on the island. It lasts for about three and a half days, but that's a bit too much for me, so I went for one. As islanders you can get day tickets, so that helps.

The stages are set out in the middle of nature. One was in the dunes for instance and another (below) was in the middle of the forest. Everyone sat down there and the atmosphere is beyond words.  Thousands of people come to the festival every year and when the tickets sell they are usually sold out within minutes. Luckily as an islander you can always get tickets and at a discount too! Islander privilege! ;-)

I saw several very good (and less good) performers play like Kris Berry & Requisite (a woman with a voice like an angel, I even bought a cd), The Kik (fun fun fun), Benjamin Clementine (a bit odd, but he grows on you) several others, but the reason I got the ticket for Saturday was Ben Howard. He was still quite unknown when he was here last time several years ago and he blew the entire audience away in a small performance hall near the camp site. Now he had center stage and an entire band, was a main act for the evening and people actually could sing along with his songs. I guess he has moved up in the music world. I still missed the magic of that performance from years ago though. That was something really special.

After all that walking around from stage to stage and standing for hours on end among crowds of people I really needed some serious down time.On Sunday I spent the day mostly napping and reading at home, but on Monday it was time to get out and about again.

I walked through the forest and dunes and then I decided to climb the dunes that lead to the North Sea and found myself a perfect spot on a sandy plateau right here:

It looks lower than it was. I was about halfway up a dune. It was one of those white clouds blue sky days with lots of sun and a nice fresh wind (it had been pretty windless the days before which is unusual for us). I brought a book and a sjawl to lay down on. I napped, I read, I stared into the distance and repeated this a couple of times until some time later I discovered four hours had passed!
It was one of those perfect afternoons that just kind of happen.

When I got home and had showered the sand off I was more relaxed than I had been in years and that is saying something. It's like my whole body let go of everything. It was wonderful wonderful wonderful (yes, I had to say that three times).

That night I closed off the weekend with a few hours at the journaling table. 

I wish I could be that relaxed all the time, but my personality won't allow it. I'm doing my best though, haha. In any case it was one of those weekends that is just good for the soul, especially those hours at the beach.

In the meantime some work days at the office have passed and now a new weekend has begun for me. Let's hope it's another wonderful and artsy one and I wish you all the same: good weekend all!

Walking sketches

It happens way too rarely that I will actually sit down and sketch during one of my walks. I take tons of photographs, but sketching always seems like just too much work to do while on the road.

These are piles of poles and planks to be used for the festival called Into The Great Wide Open.

I have a great admiration for urban sketchers and nature sketchers. You know, people who actually go out and about to draw and paint. I do draw and paint, but I always prefer the comfort of my own home to do it. I'm not uncomfortable with people seeing me or something, but I am uncomfortable for the sheer fact that I don't have a table to work on and put my stuff. I'm a luxury sketcher. ;-)

A little view from the dyke along the Wadden Sea. Those things in the field are horses by the way.

However recently I was inspired by the urban sketchers blog and last weekend during two of my walks I actually sat down and sketched. I brought a little sketchbook and my tiny watercolour box plus a waterbrush and a drawing pen. And it was...well...doable, haha.

Scene from a road through the dunes. Um...not so good with perspective, but I like the colours.

Now I realize that these aren't great sketches, but that is not the point. The point is that I did it. I took the time to do them and now I have a self made visual memory of some scenes I came across on my walks. I would really like to do more outdoorsy sketching. I don't care if the sketches are wonky, I just want to make more of a habit of it. Let's keep our fingers crossed I can make it work somehow.

Wishing you all a wonderful and sketchy day! ;-)

Watercolour mosaics

As you know I have been dabbling in what I like to call watercolour mosaics. By that I mean painting as if the painting was made up of little tiles. However I could not find the right approach yet. Even though I liked making these paintings they were still not quite what I had in mind. Someone suggested that might be because there was no space between the tiles I painted and she was right of course.

So now I have found the perfect little helper for that. It's called a masking fluid marker. Of course I knew of the existence of masking fluid, but only the kind you apply with a brush and that just didn't seem precise enough, so I never used it (I don't even own any). But when I came across these markers by Molotow I knew that they were meant for me, so I bought two, experimented a little and then I was ready for the big test: some real watercolour mosaics. Here's how that turned out: 

You can see the markers here above the book. They write in blue and work just like any ordinary paint marker.

I am very pleased with the result. You simply draw the lines with the markers. I use templates and a ruler to get my lines so straight by the way. Then you colour the shapes in and afterwards you can remove the masking fluid by rubbing it off. I suggest using a kneadable eraser for that, it saves a lot of mess. The marker I have comes in 2 and 4 milimeter width. They do take a little patience to use especially with a ruler and such, because you are basically applying a kind of rubber that sticks to everything and regularly have to wipe both the ruler and the tip to keep the work clean, but it's a small price to pay for having such a precise masking tool.

Here are the pages a bit closer up:

As always these were done in the Fodder Book, which is a big Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.

I will definitely be making more of these now that I finally have the means to do them as I intended! Hope you like them too and hope I've given you a little tip for an art supply that might come in really handy if you need to mask off precise lines.

Have a wonderful and artsy day all!