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 :-)

House on the hill

Last week I got a nice request for a drawing. My family owns an ancient farmhouse on the Portuguese hills. Every year grapes are freshly picked from the vineyard. Wine is made from the grapes and this year also several fruits from the land were used to make liqueur. My cousin asked me to design a label for the liqueur-bottles. Last year I made labels for the wine and I wrote about this on my blog back then. You can read about this and the house on the hill overhere: http://estherlankhaar.blogspot.nl/search/label/wine%20label.

Last year I wasn't very skilled in Photoshop yet, so the labels I made were completely handemade :-). Since then I learned so much and I have nice ideas for what I want to create this year. I made a drawing with a photograph as a reference, of the house which I will use for my labeldesign.

When it's ready I"ll definitely write about it here, to be continued :-).

I thought it to be a nice idea to create a postcard with an old, sepia look of  the house. Also, a print of the original drawing is available on A4 or A3 size. You can take a look at these new additions to my shop over here if you like:

http://www.etsy.com/nl/shop/EsthersPostcards

I hope you enjoyed this blogpost and have a beautiful day!

This is last years red wine with my label on it :-).

Hurry on Home

Autumn in New York

Autumn in New York I call this one. These days I'm not in the writing-on-my-blog-mode, so I try to let my images speak for themselves. The original of this one is done on A3-paper in Indian Ink. I think an A3 scanner is on my wish-list (has been there for a while), because on my A4 scanner I can only scan larger work like this partly. (And I'm no good photographer, otherwise that would be an option).

'Asian girl'

Collection of things from my kitchendrawer

Etsy shop

Yes, I have an Etsy shop now! It's been quite some work figuring everything out (still am busy with it and you can see the result over here:
http://www.etsy.com/nl/shop/EsthersPostcards. 

I have a lot idea's for nice things for my shop, it's much fun exploring the possibilities! I"ll keep you posted. :-)

summer sketchbookpages and syncronicity

Me and my moleskine (watercolour) sketchbook really found eachother this summer. I found myself in a very happy and 'flowy' mood while sketching these mostly on my balcony. I'm very thankful we have a beautiful summer so far here in the netherlands.

The moment I wanted to sketch something, not sure what yet, I was going through a magazine and my eye was caught by a beautiful picture of a colourful hot-air balloon. I instantly knew I wanted to draw this. The most remarkable thing happened to me. While drawing the balloon, I took a look at instagram and I saw Heidi posted a picture of a stamp-hot-air-balloon she was working on. Coincidence? Later that evening I was watching television and I saw a colourful hot-air balloon like the one I was drawing coming by in a commercial. ?!? The next day I turned on the radio and I heard the day before that (about the time I was working on my balloon) an incident happenend with a hot-air balloon in the netherlands. Coincidence once more. four in a row. I like to call it synchronicity. 

Carl Jung said this : " Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see."

Did you ever notice these kind of synchrone things happening in your life? I would love to hear them!

I like to think that being able to notice these things, feeling present, in the here and now, means I'm on a good way....

Household scenery

Not only in my drawings, but also in my house, I love to try to create pretty looking scenes. How about you? As you can see, I like things with a vintage feeling to it. Do you recognize the vintage items on the shelves in my kitchen?

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! 

cards en more cards

Hi people! How are you all?

The past months I've been experimenting with designing businesscards and postcards with some of my illustrations on it. It's all been a learning process to figure everything out about how to edit my illustrations in photoshop to get them look the best on a card, how to choose and edit cards and choosing an online printing-service. Trial and error a lot! I started wth trying Vistaprint. At first, the text on my delivered cards was too small: oops...my own fault... Next, reordered, tried again, was a bit happier with the results but not quite completely happy because I noticed some things not being perfect in the outlining, placement of the images, text etc. Even though I ordered a sample through e-mail, (which you have to pay for at Vistaprint), I wasn't completely satisfied with the results, part of it due to my own inexperience in this matter, part of it because I felt Vistaprint wasn't completely customer-friendly in the ordering and designing process.

And then, I discovered Moo! I love Moo!  I ordered several things, from postcards to business cards and small business cards too. At Moo, you can order smaller amounts (50 cards instead of the 200 at vistaprint) and upload several designs within the 50, so you get several different cards. And I absolutely love the customer-friendly and beautiful site and the way everything works smoothly. Plus you can upload a sample of your design for free. Oh, and they deliver accurate and in nice-looking packages and boxes for your cards.

It might be a bit more expensive when you calculate the price per item, but it's absolutely worth your money I think. The paper is thick and smooth and the cards look really beautiful. With the mini-cards (half of the regular business-card size) I ordered a cute felted card-holder. I love it!!

Still, I learned things I would do a little better at my next order, but like I said, I love the way the products I ordered at Moo look and feel like. And no, I'm not a secret sales-person at Moo :-). But I could be....;-).

My plan is to order more (post) cards at Moo with several designs and to start an Etsy-shop, to sell them. Also, a quality-printer is on my wish-list, to be able to make beautiful prints for the Etsy-shop at home.

Now I have to get the courage to give my cards to more people, besides friends and family.....:-D
The feeling I have is I want to pay attention to some networking in the town and area I live in. I made connections, have a lot of ideas, now I have to and want to take some steps and already took some bay-steps. I pray for the bravery to take more and more steps. ;-)

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!

Moving ahead

Did you ever notice I got a thing for vintage stuff and colors? No....? Well, here's my latest moving, four-wheel vehicle and 'proof' of my interest in stories and objects of days gone by....;-). I just had to draw a cute VW-van like this. I was wondering if adding some turquoise for the background would be a good idea... I somehow like it like this myself, but maybe some blue...

I have a feeling there are stories lingering around in my subconsciousness that would be a match with some of my illustrations and need to be told. One day!

Anne Frank

In the Netherlands the 4th and 5th of May are days we remember the victims of the second world war. On the 4th we are all silent at 8th o'clock in the evening for two minutes, remembering all the victims of the war. On the 5th of May, it's liberation day, on this date in 1945 Holland was liberated from the German occupation which lasted for 5 years.

When I was about 11 years old I read Anne Franks diary for the first time and this book  really made a big impression on me. The way this girl that was about my age wrote about what happened to her in her life and the way she expressed her feelings, emotions and thoughts on paper, really moved me. An adolescent girl with all kind of 'normal' coming of age challenges in an extra-ordinary situation.  Every couple of years I read Anne Franks diary again and every time it makes me feel sad and hopeful at the same time. The way she could still be hopeful and optimistic despite of all the things happening to her and her family and to all the other people who were affected by the war, was and is something I still admire very much. The past week I read Anne Franks diary again and made a drawing.

During the time Anne and her family hid in the 'Achterhuis' (Backhouse'), they had a few very loyal helpers, that came to see them every day with food and everything the hiders needed. And that for almost two years, risking their own life. I've often wondered what kind of person I would have been in this situation. Would I have been brave and help others, risking my own life? I can only hope so, very much....The book doesn't have a happy end because the hiders were betrayed and Anne and the others died in concentrationcamps. Only her father Otto Frank survived and he made Anne's wish come true and made sure her diary was published and is now world famous.