Oldies

Sketchbooks all over the place….I tend to start a new one before the previous one is completed….Somehow I need something new every now and then and a new book for new ideas comes in. It's nice to go through 'old' books though. And rediscover drawings. How about my little 'Hugo' character who found a baby-rabbit :-)? I drew him in January last year.

Hello! About my website and so much more....

Hi all! It's been quite a while since my latest blogpost. I've been busy doing a lot of things. Where to start? First of all I made my own website. I felt like I needed a place to show my portfolio in a nice way, besides the porfolio part on his blog. Luckily, I'm in contact with several nice people I met through 'Creative Courage', an e-course I followed last year. This courses members have a private facebookgroup to support each other and give advice on a lot of subjects in the world of creativity. I asked the group if people could recommend a place for me where/how I could make a nice portfolio website. They suggested 'Weebly'. And....as it turned out, making the website was quite easy and fun to do! It felt really great to be able to make this myself, as where a year ago I asked around for other people to do this for me (and would have had to pay for it). I"m so happy I met this creative and supportive people to give such great advice and proud of myself of my progress and all the things I can do myself, I thought I couldn't, didn't know how to do it before.

The website developed into not only a portfolio website, but also a site about 'esther lankhaar illustrations', professionaly. Here it is! :-) http://estherlankhaar.weebly.com/index.html.
I"m planning on writing a bit more about myself in the ;'about me' section and ofcourse, the whole website will develop in time. But I'm very happy with the result so far!

In the meanwhile I worked on some drawings and illustrations.

First of all, an illustrated story about a donkey named Edmund, he's a serious and nice, worrying donkey and the story around him is developing from one drawing to another.

Here's a part of Edmunds' story. On this page he's trying out yoga-exercises because he's so tensed....;-)

There's more illustrations about Edmund and his story on my Facebookpage if you're interested.

I'm really starting to love Edmund the serious worrying donkey and I"m curious how the story will develop further.

As for my online friends, some of them I met in real life! Last week I met Koosje, Nini and Yvonne in the botanical gardens in Amsterdam. This was so great, to be able to meet the nice people fom online offline! :-). These girls are really lovely ladies. And if that wasn't enough, I also skyped with Suzi from Australia. A very sweet and creative lady I had a very nice talk with!

And....here's a watercolour drawing I made yesterday. I' m very pleased how it turned out. I saw this little bird yesterday when I was visiting my parents and I asked my father if I could lend his bird-book. Allthough he thinks he"ll never get it back :-), the book really helped me to capture the bird I saw right.

II feel like drawing more birds in the future!

Also, I"m still following the drawing lessons at Studio Kolectiv. I'm a very happy and busy girl ;-).

Before I forget!  I also got inteviewed by Katie Ness, who I met through "Every Day Matters", a facebook group where people post drawings.. I felt so honored and Katie is such a nice woman too, belly-dancer, artist. always busy doing a lot of creative and fun things. You can take a look at her life-style blog she started recently and the interview with me overhere.

Bye bye, have a nice sunday all!

Drawing and determination

Faces always seem to keep inspiring me. I still feel that I am in my practicing and experimenting phase with my drawing. I've always loved drawing since I a was a little girl. You could always find me drawing or reading ;-). It's only since the beginning of this year that I really got the drawing-craziness, I have to do it all the time, where in the years I grew up and was grown up, it was just something I did ocassionally. Somehow, I always had the idea that people who could draw, just did it, put a few lines on paper, and voila, there was a perfect drawing. Now I know it takes a lot of practise and determination to get better at it. Except maybe for the real great artists like Rembrandt, maybe he could really capture something in just one try. But still, he practised, by drawing too.

I look at other peoples work that inspires me a lot and I try to draw similar things myself. I always keep Leonardo Da Vinci quote in mind:

"If one knows how to copy, one knows how to do it."

I only begin to get the feeling right now, that experimenting and practising is becoming to pay off. When I draw I start to be able to "nail it"  in a drawing directly, where before I liked the drawings I made, but it was still a coincidence when a dawing was right and there where always things I saw, that I could become better at, and I thought about: well, this or that you could do better in a next drawing. Now, I start to get lucky more often and get it right in one time. Still, I want to develop my own style, that's my next wish! :-) and become much better in all kind of techniques, because there's still so much to learn. I'm also following very inspiring drawing and concept lessons at a studio in the town I live in.

When I was working on this drawing, I was amazed that I really did it in this one, and the drawing just happened, without much 'sweat' and erasing, it's just there and I like it!

The first picture is a photo, the second one a scan. My scanner isn't quite big enough for a drawing on A3 size,  I discovered and my photographing and photoshop skills could be much better. This is what I don't like, I want to quickly be able to post a drawing on my blog, but it takes time and adjustments to get it about right, but still, the presentation could be better. I have to find a way to fix this problem because I don't like to spend a lot of time figuring all these things out, adusting etc etc. I just want to draw, not photograph, photoshop, scan etc etc! :-)

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've been around, blogging. I haven't been drawing for a while, but last week I started this drawing as an assignment for my drawing lessons. We had to find work and images that inspired us and create something, using the chosen images as an inspiration.

The drawing is still work in progress, I'm planning to add some details. I"ll take it to my drawing lessons and ask my teacher for advice.

The photo of the drawing of the girl seems a little bit skew (don't know if this is the right English word to use in this context?) but that's because the paper crinkled a bit because of the water and ink. The drawing itself is less skew in reality ;-).

Visual Storytelling

I am following drawing lessons once a week. I'm following these lessons at Studio Kolectiv: http://cargocollective.com/studiokolectiv. The past few weeks I've been working on what has to become a three-piece. We had to think of a way to tell a visual story in three pieces. Old, sepia coloured photographs and stories taking place a few centuries ago, always speak to me. The kind of victorian stories, Charles Dickens style...I feel attracted to this kind of darker, melancholic period in history. Old, dampy, foggy streets in London.....

For this assignment for my drawing lessons, I came up with a story (really happened) I found on the internet about an orphan girl and her brother who were left by their mother at an orphanage after their father died. All this taking place around about the year 1800.

In these first two drawings I tried to visualize the loneliness surrounding this story about two children left by their mother. I did some research on the internet, looking for an image of an old chair and looked for old childrens-pictures to use as a reference.

The third piece of this what is now still is a two-piece ;-), I'm still thinking about. This will follow hopefully. It's done in ink and faber-castell fineliners.