Earth, Love, Tree.

Last year I met a very sweet lady called Nancy who makes very beautiful oil-paintings of (mostly) Dutch scenery's and landscapes (lovely work, take a look overhere). She's a very lovely, open, beautiful, funny and sensitive person.

Ever since I was a kid I've loved animals and especially horses and I was very happy when I met Nancy and her sweet horse named Theo. The first time I met him he was more interested in his green grass than he was to meet me :-), but the second time around he allowed me to cuddle him for a long time in his stable.
A little while ago Nancy asked me to make a little book especially for her. This is the book I made. She gave me a few words/themes that meant something to her: Earth, Love and Tree.
It's an accordeon-folded little book on thick watercolourpaper.

Part of the book.

The little book folded

Traveling

I wonder about the travel-themes reappearing in my work...suitcases, maps....

Foxes, French Bathtubs and my website

My website is work in progress. The past week I've been working on presenting my portfolio in an origanized and categorized way. My portfolio-page you can see overhere :http://www.estherlankhaar.com/portfolio.html and I also added seperate pages for my sketchbookwork and my bookillustrations.

Come take a peek if you like!

Today I drew this. I was daydreaming about an antique French bathtub and  I just started drawing one. Before I knew it, a cup of tea, a book and a picture of a fox were added....and ofcourse towels, a sponge, soap....slippers....a flower.....Everything one needs in a bathroom ;-)....

Smiling Cat

My Ginny is always around, keeping me company, helping me out with stuff: art, doing laundry, taking a nap, reading the newspaper….;-)

Wintery tree

Two versions of a watercolor-drawing I made. These two digitally edited. I hope you like them!

Colours of autumn

Most trees still have their green summer leafs over here in the Netherlands where I live. But...some signs of autumn are on the way...Here's my watercolourdrawing of.....not a 100 % sure what leaf this is yet....Maybe maple...

Portrait of a sheep

One of the things I love so much about drawing is that it makes me pay attention and really see things in the subject I'm drawing I haven't seen before. I'm looking so closely and sometimes become to love my subject for it's beauty or character. For me this can be in a human, an animal, a house, a flower... and often even while using a photograph as reference. Most of the times this happens when I draw a person or an animal. It feels touching and moving to discover a piece of the soul or the essence of my subject, at least that's how I feel it. I feel something for sheep now. :-)....well.... for the one I saw on my photograph that seemed real sweet. I hope I captured a piece of it on my paper :-)

Moleskine pages

When I start a new sketchbook, there's always an idea I have about what I want use this sketchbook for.  Ideas about perfect drawings, perfect sketchbooks....the kind of drawings I want to make in it; 'I want to make this one all about flowers'. Along the way, the sketchbook turns in to something else, because I don't feel like doing flowers all the time, get bored of it, want to try something else. Plus it feels good just to draw and make something, just having fun. Not to try to make a 'perfect' drawing and don't think about it to much, but just do it. Without any goal in mind. Even when I do start a drawing with an idea in my mind, often, along the way of making it, it turns into something I didn't expect. Serendipity. Sometimes with a drawing I'm happy with as a result, sometimes with a drawing that didn't particularly turn out great. But who says  what's great? I just want to draw and sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. These are the things I say to myself at good days ;-). At more insecure days I'm not so sure anything I'm doing has any purpose and is any special. Still I just have to draw. I just know and feel that. I  feel  I'm myself when I do it. And happy. Here are a few of yesterday's 'playing around' pages of my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a good, joyful day! 

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!

Glued to the spot

It all started with black ink spots. Then the green followed, the little figure, the "glued to the spot" and last but not least; the trees. The 'glued to the spot' is literally glued to the black inkspot and the little figure is standing there, glued to the spot.

Are you still following me? ;-). Hope you don't think I'm crazy now :-).....but.... I don't know where this all came from, suddenly, it was just there.

Now I have to think about if being 'glued to the spot' has some kind of meaning for me in my life somehow at this moment....:-D.
(For the readers in the Netherlands; my translation of 'glued to the spot' in Dutch is: 'aan de grond genageld staan'.)

Autumn Nights

There's something about autumn nights. Staying home where it's warm, with a cup of tea.I felt like drawing a cosy autumn scene. Yay for my Nikon camera! Well....not really mine, but my cousin was so sweet to lend me her camera, since she's got a newer one. I'm so happy with this, because now I can take better pictures.

The Sun was just Yellow Energy

                                   

Yet another Moleskine

I started working in -yet another- Moleskine today. This time it's a little watercolour Moleskine book.
I have several going on. Every book has a theme, and I'm planning on working in each one every now and then. I find it hard to concentrate on one medium for a longer period, because I find so many things interesting to do and learn about. So I guess I"ll just have to skip from one to another, however I feel like.
This one is about watercolour. I also used a little pencil, stabilo fineliners and collage. Oh, and Indian Ink,
I've enjoyed working on these two a lot!

Red and White Wine

It's been a week!
These are the two winelabels I wrote about in my last blog. I have family in Portugal. My mothers sister was married to a Portuguese man, he passed away last year. The family owns an old vineyard, with red and white grapes. Now that my oncle passed away, my cousin tries to keep the wine harvest going. She lives in the Netherlands but flies over to Portugal as much as she can. There are so much things to do overthere. The old house needs fixing for example and there's the grapes that need to be picked every year. Before, my oncle used do all the things in and around the land, but now he's gone, my cousin tries to organize things. It's a lot of work! Especially since my aunt (her mother) recently had heartsurgery. Luckily, they got a lot of lovely people over there to take care of things around the house and to look after the land.

This year the grapes were picked by a lot of local people. I offered to design a wine label for the red and white wine from 2012. This seemed to me like a very fun thing to do! The idea of winebottles with a label made by me, gives me a good feeling! My work for people to see, and to hopefully, enjoy for a moment when they look at it.

My oncle who passed away last year was named "Fausto" and my cousin came up with the idea to name the wine "Fausto Tinto" (the red wine) and "Fausto Branco"(the white wine). "Moita de Alvorninha" is the name of the mountain the vineyard is on.

These are the results of the lables I came up with. A lot of trying out....It's a little collage, drawing, painting and writing in indian ink, watercolour and coloured ink. And drawing pen.

The white wine label (Fausto Branco), I'm not completely happy with yet. Work in progress! ;-).

I still, and I say this almost in every blog I write, have to buy myself either a good scanner or a better camera. This is the sharpest I can get the pictures, even with some adjustments in Iphoto and Photoshop. I haven't got the best camera. Still haven't decided if I should spend my money on a camera or on a scanner....Suggestions?

An addition, writing this sunday the 7th: second picture made with a good Nikon camera! Such a difference!

Wine Label

Family of mine own an old vineyard In Portugal. They asked me to design a label for this years white and red wine. I love this! I started with a label for the white wine, I will be experimenting with more designs and drawings!
The pink flower on the left above is the bougainville,  beautifully growing in the area of the vineyard and the bottle is an example of an old wine bottle that was recently discovered at an attic at the house at the vineyard.

Winter Time

It might be a little early...but yesterday evening I found myself drawing a wintery scene...
Like most of the drawings I start...I didn't plan it this way. I just started the drawing of this girl and then I got the idea to add the snowflakes. To me it looks a like a very cosy, winterscene now. I'm thinking about maybe turning this into a christmas-card. What do you think? It's september so I started just in time to think about Christmas ;-).

A Funny Little Story

Illustrative journaling: Telling a little story by an illustration/drawing and some words.
Here's one about about something that made me smile yesterday.
My camera is so crappy by the way. I hate this. I need either a scanner or a good camera! Or both! I need sponsoring because I'm a poor artist! ;-)
You should be able to read the little story if you'd like to,  by clicking on the picture for a larger image.

My Cup of Tea

I bought a watercolour sketchbook yesterday, and some waterolour paint. When I see other peoples work in watercolour, I like the effect you can achieve with it. I'm not experienced in working with it, but I thought: let's give it a try. And it's always so much fun to go to the art-supplies store and buy some new stuff to experiment with.
So this is yesterday's watercolours result! I must say I like how it worked out. It's done in watercolour, Chinese Ink for the text and some coloured pencil and Faber-Castell Artist Pitt pen.