Merry Christmas!

My dear blogsy people,

Right from the cosy rooms at Casa Caatje (aka my home) I wish you all a wonderful, warm and happy Christmas.

May Santa bring you everything you want and then some!

Lots of love,

Caatje

Morning Paintings #271-280

Time for another batch of my Morning Paintings. Just last week I passed the 300 mark and I'm pretty damned pleased about that I can tell you! Even though I didn't really set a specific goal for myself (except to paint every morning) I feel like I've reached some important mark. The ones I do after this are just a bonus, haha..

Here however are paintings no. 271 to 280.

#271 - Scallops and Dots

#272 - Circles in Circles

#273 - Grid Pattern

#274 - Rainbow Blocks II

#275 - Circles in Circles

#276 - Mosaics

#277  - Bloom

#278 - Dashing

#279 - Lines + Dashes

#280 - Grid

No. 274 is the most lengthy Morning Painting I have done so far. It took me two and a half hours to finish. And if that isn't impressive enough, I did this one in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. I have these bouts of nights where I just wake up and am wide awake and full of energy and ideas and the best way to deal with that is to simply go into the studio and do something. After that I can sleep fine again. ;-)

With painting no. 280 I also finished sketchbook no. 6!

Right now I am over halfway in sketchbook no.7 and I have decided to fill it up and then move on to something else for my morning routine. I do intend to keep painting these little gouache paintings, but no longer as a morning practice. I will start another morning practice when sketchbook no. 7 is full and will tell you all about it then.

For now I just wish you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Let's go to the movies!

Um..I'm wondering if above is a misleading title for this blogpost. After all I'm not a moviemaker. In fact, my skills when it comes to moving pictures are pretty much non existent.

But I do know how to press the record button on my smartphone. And that's exactly what I have been doing every now and then in the last few months during my walks. In this post I would like to show some of them, just so have a bit of an idea of what my island looks like live. They are all very short impressions by the way.

I wish I could make you feel the wind and smell the sea air and make you fight the storm or feel the sun on your face, but technology has not come that far just yet. So this will have to do.

The first one was taken in October at the North Sea beach on a reasonably calm day with overcast skies.

The second one I took from the top of a dune that I often cross to get to the beach. This spot is about a fifteen minute walk from my house. It was taken in November, a day after a big storm. The sky was cloudy but there was still plenty of sun (and wind!).

The next one was taken on that same November day but on the beach itself. It shows how the sand can move across the beach sometimes. These are not the times you want to walk against the wind for you will get sandblasted and that can be very painful! This is still a pretty mild day by the way. There are times you don't want to be on the beach at all!

The next one was taken in November on one of those glorious sunny days with beautiful white clouds when the colours are very intense. I loved how dark blue the sea was in comparison the the white of the surf.

The next two were taken at the end of November with extreme high tide right between two big storms. The Wadden Sea is shown from two angles: from the walking path next to it (which was flooded) and from the entrance of the marina. The Wadden Sea is a very calm piece of water usually, it's mostly very shallow and a lot of the bottom of the sea shows itself at low tide. It's only like this when there's a storm.

And this last one was taken at a very different spot. This is Kooisplek, a small valley between dunes and forest. The water you see is purely rainwater and only shows like this in the fall/winter. In the summer it is completely dry. If a winter is very cold (which rarely happens here) people sometimes go skating on this water.

Well, I hope you enjoyed seeing bits of the island in moving pictures. I'm adding this post because I know how some of you enjoy the regular photographs and that they relax you. So this is for those of you who do not have the chance to travel much or live close enough to visit the beach yourself very often even though you might like to, and those who are just curious to see a bit more of this wonderful place I call home.

I wish you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

The second journal insert in my Adori

I'm currently using a specially made for me traveler's notebook as a journal and have recently finished the second insert in this book, so I thought I'd give you a peek:

The little drawings in this spread were made for me by my grand niece.

If you want to know more about what an Adori is and where you might get one yourself you can check out my previous post about this beautiful notebook here.

Hope you enjoyed looking through my journal and I wish  you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Art Supply Porn!

And that's all I'm going to say about it. ;-)

Have a wonderful and artsy day!