see you soon!

I'm going on a holiday. For everyone who is going too or still has to go, I wish you a good time!

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the DC is Patrice and her theme is "nude". As you have probably noticed by now I draw women ;-) And most of the time I think about issues as gender, feminism, women's rights but also beauty and how we look at ourselves and how society does this. So you would think that this theme fitted me perfectly, so did I at least! But I'm torn between two perceptions. My first thought was that I wanted to show something that expresses that you should be happy with your body. There are so many people (also men, but sorry, I don't like drawing men;-) who struggle with their body and how they look. I also have these times where I'm not happy with my body. But then I look back at pictures when I was younger and I see that I had nothing to worry about. I try to remember that when I have these times now. I probably will look back and think the same… So the first thing was: look at yourself and be happy about it!
But then I thought about al the nudity we see in papers, magazine and online. How we are used to these images of almost naked women who look perfect and we all want to look like these women even we know that most of them are photoshopped. That young girls think that the less they wear the better it is. So in the end this drawing turned out to be a mix of a proud women with a mirror who looks at herself but at the same time she looks like a supermodel who thinks what am I doing here? I leave it up to you, I could not make up my mind. And one last tip: do not google "nude" for inspiration… oh my, I'm so naive sometimes…

For more "nude" please visit the wonderful blog of Patrice who again made me think this week!

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the drawing challenge is the wonderful Patrice and her theme is "food". Of course I had to play along with this one! Many of you know already that I have this other blog about food. If not: I draw the recipes I cook and vary them with funny or serious quote's about food. This blog is about nice food in spite of food allergies.

In short I tell you my relationship with food. My whole life I have been allergic for peanuts and nuts. I get really ill when I only eat a third of a peanut, I can't breath. At the same time I have been suffering with headaches, stomach-ache and I was always extremely tired since I was 9 years old.  The doctors never found anything and send me home. When I was 16 it turned out that it was better for me not to eat certain things, that's why I became ill. I did that for one year but I could not keep it up. I was studying and living my life and having fun and it was to expensive to buy all that special stuff. I was used to the head-and stomach ache so that didn't bother me much. Almost two years ago I became very ill. I couldn't leave my bed for almost two months and that was the point when it hit me: I had to change things and think more about what I eat. I still I have to deal with my head and stomach because my body can not tell me what is good for it  and what not because all those years I just ignored it signals. I am used to my diet now, it is not hard. What is hard for me is that I can't figure out the signals of my body but I just give it some time. I am 33 years old now and learning what is good for me after 24 years. I started the food-blog to deal with it and to give it a positive turn and maybe to help others who have the same problems.

Like Patrice said: food has a huge impact on out health and I think most people don't realize this. People often ask me what I eat, if I still have fun and eat things that are fun and if it is not a lot of work and if it's not easier to take pills. This tells me that we have a disturb relationship with food and that the answer "it is a lot better for me and my health to eat this way" should be enough.

For more food please visit the wonderful blog of Patrice and I wish you all a nice weekend!

a king's day

Today we have a national holiday in The Netherlands: King's Day. From 1890 to 2013 the day was known as Koninginnedag or Queen's Day. On 30 April 2013 (queens's day) Prince Willem-Alexander succeeded his mother and became King. Consequently from 2014 onwards the name is to changed from Queen's Day to King's Day. We dutch are all so used having a queen and to that word koninginnedag that King's day sounds really weird, like an old story or so. Luckily our King has only daughter's so the name changes back;-)

To all who are in The Netherlands this day: have a good day with all the festivities like flea markets and enjoy!

ship ahoy

This is I think the first paper boat I ever made! I'm proud of myself that I understood the instructions, haha! It turned out okay, don't you think? I made it to promote my shop a little bit more: if you order a bag, t-shirt or clock with one of my illustrations you do not pay the shipping cost until next sunday. (This excludes framed prints, canvas or pillows). Maybe you want an original t-shirt for this summer, click here!

I hope you had some nice easter holidays and I wish you good start in this new week!

NEWS!

I started a new shop! And I like it! I just thought that it would be a great idea to use the illustrations I made for my new works. They are digital and perfect to print. Of course it is something different then the original works and therefor I changed the illustrations and gave the girls names. If you look carefully the "DreamGirl" for example is also a statement because of the chain.  There are only a few images up there for sale, soon more, but you can already now get your own t-shirt, bag or print with one of my illustrations!  Click here or check out the link on the right where now a banner for this shop is. Hope you like it!
And if you want to read something more about me, click here. My art was featured by Kettlepottracks
;-)

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the DC is Tammie and her theme is "hat/cap". I thought about it and I wanted to show you one of my paintings where I used bunny-ears as a cap or something with the hair of Pippi Longstocking as in my drawings. You can all these things see as a cap or hat, but at the same time I found it a bit boring. So I thought I take this as a chance to show you a sneak-peek of the way I draw or sketch. It is a drawing with pencil I never finished and I never turned it into a painting, but who knows…
So this is a sketch of two sexy pigs dancing with nice hats. Can you hear the music? I can almost see how they are taking their hats of ;-) The second picture is a computer drawing of the same image where I wanted to try something with color and then didn't like it i think. The different ways I work this is…

If you still want to see bunny ears or pippi-hair, click on the links "drawing" or "painting" under labels on the right.
For more hats/caps go to the blog of Tammie where beauty flows!

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the drawing challenge is Ariane and her theme is "Nest". Last week I thought a lot about my mother, she would have turned 60 years old this week. It not that I'm mostly sad, I think a lot about beautiful thinks (luckily!) And at the same time I get a bit melancholic: thinking about times that never come back. Not only the special moments but at the same time the small things. Things that you never think about when it happens. I think I just mean life ;-) Of those moments you almost never take pictures. This is what this theme made me think about: leaving and changing your nest. This drawing shows my sister and mother more then 12 years ago I think. My sister loved to make crossword-puzzles and she sits at the kitchen table while my mother finishes her lunch after coming home from work. I made this drawing 7 years ago. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to this old nest…

For more nesting (problems;-) please visit the wonderful blog of Ariane! And I wish you all a nice weekend.

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the DC is Patrice and her theme is "water". The only thing I can say about water is that I love it! Water has a magic attraction to me. I love the sea, lakes and I just love to swim in them. Unfortunately I do this way to little. A swimming pool would do it but my skin can't handle the chemicals in it very well. So why didn't I make a drawing of this? Well, I do have some happy-water-drawings but still I choose this one because I think water becomes and already is a problem on this planet. And especially clean water. It has become big business to sell us clean water and large company's are making money with it over the heads of people. Did anyone see the documentary "Bottled water" about the company Nestle? You should….  

Anyway, I tried to find some on my under-water pictures, I couldn't find them in time, but maybe I'll post one later this week, for the fun of it. Did you ever try that? Buying a camera you can use under water. Not a expensive one, one you can only use one time. It is so much fun, especially the results ;-)

Thanks Patrice for this theme and you should sure check out her blog! Also for some more water.

turning into objects

Since I'm making these new drawings I'm thinking about how I should present or hang them. I didn't really like it when I just put them on the wall. I wasn't happy with it that way. So now I came up with the idea to make them a bit more "heavy", give them a bit more volume. I pinned them onto wood and now they turned more into an object which I really like because I also work a bit with this theme of women being objects. And I like the way the threads are now hanging. In the picture below you can see the pins better that I used.

I wish you all a nice weekend and thank you for your comments on my work. It really helps me, especially when I read something that some of you see in it and that I didn't mentioned. That shows me that some of my intentions are seen!

two more

I finished two more pieces….

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the Dc is Kristen and her theme is "connection". As you might have noticed I like to draw people  ;-) so I'm mostly interested in connections between people. And the weird thing is that I not thought of the deeply connection you can have with someone but that sometimes you are just disconnected for a while. Even if you belong together you feel that the other one is on a different level.

It makes me feel uncomfortable if I notice this with strangers. You see two people, they belong together but they are not connected at all. I don't mean the ones who are having a fight, that is a different story. It looks like they are on a different planet, no threads of connection, but still….

For -I hope some more positive than mine- connections please visit the wonderful blog of Kristen! Have a good weekend!

warm as the sun

The weather is so beautiful the last couple of days, so just a drawing to welcome the sun! Have a good week every one!

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the drawing challenge is the lovely Nadine and her theme is "hair".  A wild guess: I'm not the only girl who is not at all happy with her hair. My hair is very thin and boring, it just "hangs" there. It doesn't matter if I go to the hairdresser, one day later it is just as bad. The only time I was happy with my hair were the 4 years that I had dreadlocks. Finally: my hair had volume!!! It still was a lot of work to make them look nice for such a long time but it was worth it. My ultimate wish is that I want curls and of course the one with curls straighten them out.

The other thing is that I'm also interested in the (mostly) female issues about hair, like Nadine already said "we cut it off rigorously in places where we really don't want it". Why do we do that? For ourselves or for our partners, because society at one point said we need to because a woman with hair on her legs/arms/vagina doesn't look good, sweet or nice? I found a really interesting blog about this theme. A girl started a blog called "Bare To Bush" where she documented the regrowth of her body hair after shaving most of it off. During that regrowth she realized that she has a lot to say about bodies and body images. I think this blog is not for every one but you should take a look!

For some more hair please check out the wonderful TinyWoolf blog!

drawing challenge

This weeks host for the drawing challenge is Ariane and her theme is "vase".  My feeling immediately with this theme was: I love vases! I just bought a vintage one which I really like. But my problem is to put flowers in them. The first thing is that I like flowers but I find it a bit sad to put them inside in water because they have to be outside, to grow in nature. So I don't buy them myself very often. I like to plant  seeds though and grow them myself. But once in a while someone buys me flowers and then I have this second problem and that is why I made this drawing. I can't seem to put in flowers nicely in vases! The flowers are to big, to small or the vase is to big or to small. To little flowers for my vase, to many flowers to fit in the vase and so on. It looks sad or just to a bit okay. The best thing is when someone buys me flowers and they are already in a vase, haha, perfect! So that is what the drawing is about: a big vase with to little flowers. Not in a nice design way which you see sometimes, but in a "I try but I can't help myself" way.

For more vases go to the blog of Ariane, she makes the most wonderful pictures!

well? part II

I quite get the hang of it now. Wish you all good week and thanks for your comments on my last post and saying what you think of these new drawings. And yes, if I could I also would like to make them bigger but I don't have the space and I already have problems where to put all my my large "pippi"drawings. But on the other hand I like it that you have to take a closer look to see what is going on here….

well?

What do you think? First piece in this new series is ready. It's difficult to take a good picture, just to be sure: the words are "I said don't worry it's not going to hurt". I'm not sure about the thread, if I should leave it that way. I think I decide that when I made some more of these drawings.
I wish you all a good start in this new week!

if you show you show

I don't like to celebrate valentine, I think it is to commercial and it is much more a surprise if you get a gift or card by surprise and not on an specific date (accept for your birthday of course ;-)  And in the shops you see this weird mix of sweet stuff you can buy, mostly with cute bears or other animals or the sexy things for the ladies. It gets really strange if you see them mixed together… Maybe you have noticed that I don't draw a lot of cute bears so I go for the sexy lady. Whatever you do today or this weekend, I hope you enjoy yourself, valentine or not!

in the swing of things

Last weekend an idea for a new series of drawings popped into my head and since then I have been working on them. I love that feeling when you get that energy boost of trying something new, that you are all excited by yourself. It is even better when that idea turns out the way you want it to be! Lately I wasn't sure which way I wanted my drawings to go. Every now and then I get this feeling. I could continue to make those large drawings with pencil of the girls with weapons and I still love those but I get bored. I could make more but why? Then I tried the drawings with ink but I wasn't completely happy with those. I thought if I make some more then maybe…. I felt like I was floating between things. And now I can't stop working! The drawings are a combination of a printed computer-drawing where I stitch words onto. Both things take some time doing. As you can see I kept the color red, haha! Normally I get doubts between drawing number 6 and 12 but lets not think about that for now, lets see were this is going!

as silly as fun

I feel a bit like this drawing this week: funny and weird but also sort of angry… Well, just let it be for now, hope the frogs make you smile (I had those as a kid now I think of it;-) Hope you have a good week!