Practising and inspiration

'If one knows how to copy, one knows how to do it" (Leonardo da Vinci).

I sometimes like to try and see if I can copy something by a famous artist a bit. Just to practise and because I want to know if I can understand how an artist drew something. A few weeks ago I went to the museum and bought a few art-postcards. One of them is Rembrandts drawing 'Saskia at a Window'. Here's my version of it. :-) I think her right arm (in my version ;-)) is a little too short/small. This happens to me often, that I notice some things that are not a 100% right. After I took the picture, when I look at it. Apparently taking a picture of a drawing is a good way to create some 'distance' to see things you didn't see while working at a drawing.

Good Luck Lily

I drew a lily today. Yesterday evening in bed I thought of a ladybug. I have no idea why but I did.

So I drew a ladybug today. On a mug with a lily in it. I hope it brings luck to who ever needs it. :-)

Green and pale pink seem to be my colors lately by the way...I have to work a bit on the foot of the mug I see. Looks like a bit of an unstable mug this way;-)

'I Do'

A new blog header, and a lot of things happening....

From the beginning of 2012 I've been drawing like there's no tomorrow ;-) and I felt very strongly about this drawing of mine was going somewhere, that this is a journey I just have to proceed. Have to because I just can't stop drawing and I'm loving it so much, it makes me so very happy to do it. I can't imagine how my life before drawing was ;-).....I've been drawing since I was little, but since the last year I really discovered that drawing is what I simply HAVE to do. Secretly I hoped that I could become better and better and maybe, maybe I could do something with my drawing professionally in the future.
I knew I still had and have so much to learn and I want to. Learn. Drawing lessons are part of my journey and I've loved them ever since I started them. The teacher and the environment with very talented fellow students are so inspirational and encouraging. I'm following the lessons at Studio Kolectiv.

The other day, my drawing teacher asked me if I wanted to do something with my drawing :-). She's been complimenting me about my progress the last months and I can remember she asked me this question before, a few months ago. That day I answered...."no....it will be difficult...bla bla bla...". A lot of bla bla because I was too scared to admit I DO want to do something with my drawing professionally. Funny I was so scared to admit it. She or someone else could think: "well well, she wants to draw or illustrate professionally...this girl has a lot to learn, what is she thinking...".

But this time around, I was brave! I answered: "Yes, I would like that!" It felt so good and encouraging she finds my drawings good enough to do something with it professionally maybe. She said that I should work on my photo-editing skills in that case. This is indeed in my planning for the next months: working on my Photoshop and Illustrator skills.

So I felt encouraged and brave enough to finally call my blog ' Esther Lankhaar Illustration'. I had the feeling I was heading in this direction but I wasn't brave enough before to say it out loud, because I wasn't sure I was and would be good enough and I wasn't ready for it yet. But now things are coming together and my teacher gave me a little push in the right direction at the right time. To at least be brave enough to say 'I do'. :-)

To be continued! :-D

Moleskine Pages and Winterweather in Spring

A few pages of last weeks work in my Moleskine. I've always loved old soul music. "Sitting on the dock of the bay" by Otis Redding, has always been one of my favourites. It makes me feel melancholic, but in a good way! The second spread is about me buying a looooot of art-supplies and how this makes me happy. It doesn't have to be expensive stuff, I can be happy with invisible tape :-). I also went for a lunch with my mother last week and I had a very juicy, orange-carrot-ginger juice with my sandwich, which I felt like drawing, because it was so colourful. It gave me a bit of a spring feeling, and I need this a lot. I think we all do in the Netherlands because Spring just won't come this year...we're still waiting for it. It's about 3 degrees during the day now with an extremely cold, eastern wind, and a freezing -15 in the night. Last year at this exact same day it was a sunny 19 degrees Celcius.....

On to the paper, out of my head

Friday is blogging day, as it appears to be....;-)

The illustrated story I've been working on for my drawing lessons is still work in progress. I feel like I've got a couple of nice drawings and  the story in my mind. Only one or two drawings are needed to finish the story. I want to make a little book of this story eventually. First there are a few things I need to do. I have to work on my Photoshop skills to be able to present the story the way I'd like to, the way I have in my mind.  I've been experimenting a bit with Photoshop, but there are things I'm stumbling upon every time, while experimenting. Frustration all over....but....after an afternoon of experimenting, I decided to let things rest and see how this challenge will find it's way to a solution. I didn't have to wait that long; the next morning, I found a solution in my email inbox. An offer for an online Photoshopcourse with a very lage discount! Funny how solutions have a way of presenting themselves to you if you let things rest, having faith answers will come your way, one way or another. :-)

Something else I 'd like to share is that I've started working in -yet another- new Moleskine sketchbook. I have several sketchbooks laying around. Some cheap ones which I also love, some Moleskines. All for different purposes. Watercolour, botanical/nature drawings, ideas/journaling....and so on...A couple of days ago I got the idea to start working in an new a4 size moleskine sketchbook a still had. I want to make this one into an art/illustrative-journal. A place to write and draw and glue things down that are on my mind. Where I can express my thoughts and emotions. Especially thoughts have a tendancy to stay with me too long, so I hope this journaling will help them stay in the book. And out of my head.

Creative Friends

It's so much fun that I met creative creative friends through several e-courses I followed last year. The meeting  has only been online, through the world wide web so far , but you never know, I might one day meet one of these people in real life! One of them is Nini. In the facebookgroup with participants of the Creative Courage e-course, people sometimes send eachother mail, the old fashioned way, through the mailbox, just to surprise one another and as a little art-exchange.

I sent Nini a blue-house postcard.

I was was so happy when she let me know my mail had arrived, all the way from the Netherlands to Slovenia!

Take a look at Nini's blogpost about it and while you're there you can see her adorable sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project.

Rain made mirrors of the earth

My finshed collage. Added some ink, colored pencil and a few words that speak to me:

Remember seeking moon's rebirth 

Rains made mirrors of the earth  

The sun was just yellow energy

(From the song 'Chariot' by Gavin DeGraw)

Am I Romantic?

Another recent purchase and treasure: 'The Collage Workbook' by Randel Plowman (http://acollageaday.blogspot.nl/). I love collages and this book is so inspirational. I immediately felt like trying out some of the ideas from the book. The result is this flowery nature inspired collage. The drawing in the last picture is inspired by a picture of a little cabinet like this I saw in a magazine. The books, the plant, the rug and, well everything besides the cabinet;-) came from my own imagination. Both of these works, the collage and the drawing have a romantic feeling. At least, that's how I see it. I didn't start these with the idea of creating something romantic. My work just turns out this way often. So I suppose it's just the colors and images I feel attracted too.:-). I suppose I'm not considered to be a particularly romantic person. But this might just be a side of me that needs investigation. ;-)

The collage isn't finished, I feel it needs something but I'm not sure yet what. So I"ll just let it rest and something will come to mind.

Tiny Books

I've recently discovered the book 'How to make books' by Esther K. Smith. A fellow-student brought this book to my drawing lessons. I decided to purchase this book myself because the book looked like fun. I can't show you a picture of the books because it was a bit damaged and I sent it back. Still waiting for a replacement, but I took a peek in the book and tried out a simple way to fold a little book. For this one you have to use thin paper, a4 size. After folding it looks like in the second picture. I decided to experiment with it and glued the pages together so that I got a 4-page little book with thick pages. I cut the pages a bit so that the pages are even and it got nice rounded angles. The tiny yellow one with the dots is finished (just a tiny 'circulair' visual experience ;-)) and the orange one is WIP. It only has this front for now. I"ll fill it when I'll get an nice idea of what to put in it. Maybe little poems combined with drawings, or something else that inspires me a certain moment.

Red, Green and Yellow

I've been experimenting with the size of the images that I want to put on this blog/on the internet. I see some people put a watermark on their pictures to prevent other people from copying their work for commercial purposes. I don't like it very much when I see this watermark on other peoples work, it distracts me somehow. I'd like to look a the images just the way they are, without these (often) big watermarks on it. At the same time, I get it why people do it of course. One of the blogs I read regularly is the one from the very talented Andrea Joseph.  She wrote about people have been copying her work for commercial purposes. Her drawings appear on tote-bags in Russia for example. 

It's not that I want to compare my drawings with Andrea Josephs, these are a league of their own, but I've been thinking about this subject. What I decided to do from now on is put smaller and less pixeled images on the internet, to make printing and copying by people with 'bad intentions' less attractive because this way prints will be more blurry if someone tries to enlarge them. This is what I read about others people advice on this subject at least.

At the very same time, I feel a bit ackward to even think and act on this copying subject, because this way it seems I believe my drawings are copy-worthy....

Anyhow ;-), here are the images of the shoes I drew last week. Resized, just to be more sure about what I'm not sure about...:-). I'm curious by the way, to hear what your thoughts are on this copying subject in general.

I kind of like like how these drawings turned out and I'm thinking about maybe printing them on double postcards, on nice paper.

Shoe Update

My shoes are a series now! ;-) Allready three of them (actually six ;-).

Shoes

I've got two things going on. I'm still working on the illustrated story I wrote about in previous posts. This is an assignment for my drawing lessons. I wanted to do something else besides that and I started a series of drawings/ paintings of shoes. Well..., series...I often start something with the idea to make a series of it, but most of the time I have enough of it after 2 drawings or so...This time I want to make more drawings than just two in my 'series'.! Two is a good start right? ;-)

Little illustrated story

I haven't been blogging for some time. Sometimes life gets in the way ;-). But I am working on stuff in between! Right now I'm doing some research and sketches for an assignment for my drawing lessons. I'm working on a little illustrated story and I'm getting some good help as you can see :-).

Workspace in my livingroom

Here's where it happens. My workspace. As you can see I love drawing, Apple and New York ;-)

Focus

I've been drawing and practising and experimenting with pencil, acrylic paint, watercolor, ink, collage....and so much more the previous year and I still got the te very strong drive to draw and to create. Other things in my life don't seem to get going, so I'm not that happy with every aspect about how my life is right now. But I consider myself lucky with very sweet family and friends, that's what I've got!

And, something very important too: I really found the thing that makes me most happy to do: creating and drawing. This could only have happened during the period I didn't have a job and I had to find another way to keep myself busy and inspired. And this is something beautiful that happened, even though other things in life aren't going smoothly, this creative thing is really going very smooth and flawy! Even though it's been hard work too, practising, practising and even more practising.

Could it be that this is a sign? Isn't it funny that while some things in life are difficult, other things seem to get better and clearer?

At first I didn't know what to write about the subject 'Focus' for Andrea's blogchallenge (http://dreamheartsmartart.blogspot.nl/2013/02/blogchallenge-focus.html). But It's quite clear now, while I'm writing this. I found the thing I love to do most, at this moment, I would love to get some focus and clearity in which way to go with my creativity. I've discovered that what I really like to draw is little characters and make up stories for these characters. This is what I allready loved to do as a little girl. But now, after practising the last year with all kind of techniques, I feel I can now draw, as I see things in my imigination.

I think I might want to draw and write a childrensbook maybe. Could it be that here's where my focus needs to be I wonder? 

These are a few examples of characters I've been drawing recently. The last drawing is the first of a drawing for an assignment for my drawing lessons, where we had to illustrate a story and make up a character. I suppose I have to keep on following my heart, in my drawing, in my whole life actually. Don't you think so? :-)

(Thank you Andrea! Wouldn't have written this blog without your blogchallenge and now I wrote this, I feel better and things seem a little clearer by writing things down!)