sweeties and cuties

Today is the official start of springtime! And we have such beautiful, sunny weather that this start couln't be better. I wish you all a nice day, hopefully also with some sun and some first flowers that start to show up as well.

welcome in 2012

Yesterday I bought a new mobile phone. "So what", you might think, but for me it was a big deal. I never in my live bought a phone. In 2003 I moved to Switzerland for 3 years and my mother didn't like the idea that she couldn't reach me in the train during travelling. So she bought me a phone. I used that old phone until yesterday. People would start to laugh if they saw it, but I call it vintage, haha! And as I told you before, my mother passed away, so this phone became important for me, because it was a thing that showed that my mother cared about me (off course she did!). But now it started to fall apart, I didn't get phonecalls or messages so it became annoying. Well....I had to get a new one. And if I had to, I thought by myself, I might go from vintage to smartphone. So now I'm sitting here trying to figure it out and my Teddy is taking care of my old phone.  Good I still have my Teddy.... I might as well keep the old phone;-)

one word or idea

As a comment to my last post, Mano wrote that she would love to see some of my sketches... I work in phases and these sketches are the last step before I start the actual drawing. I also write all kind of possible titles or words on them that I associate with the drawing. I keep a book where I collect sentences, maybe I show you some pages of that too someday. These drawings are made on the computer ( with red colour pencil try-outs on them) and not very spectacular...

it has to give in

I finished a new drawing. This one is a bit different then the rest of the drawings, maybe this is the first one where the girl is giving in and is not so strong anymore. Has she enough of it?

At the moment I'm struggling a bit with my drawings. I don't really know where to go with them. I'm working at two drawings now which belong together and after these two I have to see where to go next.... My head is faster then my hand can draw, I made so many new sketches but the next day I doubt them already.

girl power

8 March: International Women's Day.
Make sure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding!

or rainy days

Despite my last post, we didn't get much sun this weekend. Only saturday we saw a little bit of what spring can bring us and that was it. We made the best of it and on sunday we put the plants outside so the rain could wash of the dust of winter.

the way to the sun

March arrived and the news promised us some more sun. I like winter time: dark evenings, snow, candles and all that, but not the time between two seasons.  The last two weeks it has been very gray and rainy, but not cold anymore. Just so-so-and no more... I'm ready for some more colours, flowers, spring and the sun! And I hope we will get some of it this weekend so we can spend some time outside, enjoying the warmth on our faces.

finally!

Yesterday my pencils arrived, hurrah! So I could finally draw the face of my new Pippi-girl. As soon as I finished the drawing I will post it. I feel a lot better now!

To answer the question of Roberto (and maybe also for some of the new readers of this blog): yes, my drawings are big. 150 x 230 cm, if you want to see the proportions, take a look at this post.

temporary fix

For the last 3 weeks I'm working on the same drawing. Although working is not the correct word, I'm more staring at it and getting frustrated. And why? Because I have no pencils left! When I started I picked a colour red by Derwent Artist pencils to draw with and off course two weeks later the shop over here took them out of their selection. I can still order the pencils so about a month ago I did, but this time something went wrong and I'm still waiting. I already got a pencil extender so I can use almost every bit of the pencil. But I can't draw a face this way. Last week I was so tired of this situation that I started a search on the internet and it's pretty impossible to get the pencils in The Netherlands, or you have to pay a lot of forwarding charges. Now I found a shop in Germany and hopefully I have them by tomorrow so I can start drawing again! 
I wishyou all I nice weekend and sorry for this whining post...

like the best of men

I finished a new drawing. I like the energy in this one, the way she moves. I also find it kind of funny with a scary touch. Maybe more like a cartoon or so....
Do you even recognize what it is that she is holding in her hands? I was just wondering about that, because the perspective is a bit twisted.

present to past

Yesterday I found this old polaroid picture of me. I'm 11 years old and dressed as Pippi Longstocking. I totally forgot about that and that I loved to have my hair that way. It's my own hair and my mother did a great job creating it. Nobody was allowed to touch it or even come near me. Now I know were the inspiration for my drawings comes from...

thinking about rainbows

a tale or flirty words

Next week is valentine's day. I don't know how you think about it, but I think it's just business, to make us buy a lot of stuff we don't need. And if you with someone I think it's more a surprise if you get something by surprise, on an ordinary day. The only thing I like about valentine, is that there's a chance that you have  secret admirer and you find a card with no name in your mailbox. But that never happened to me, so... I wish you all a nice weekend, if you celebrate valentine or not!

and winter comes

My little holiday is over and it was great. We went to a national park were you can make wonderful walks. And if you're lucky and it's very cold and snowy, you can sleigh and do some ice-skating. And in the week before we left, winter started over here! The weather was perfect, just very cold and the landscape beautiful. And because I love snow, I wanted to make something. Just to bad: the snow wouldn't stick. I couln't build I giant Pippi-snow-girl out of it. So I tried to make a polar bear coming out of the water, haha!

places to go

I'm going away for a couple of days, a small holiday, discover a part of The Netherlands that I don't know yet. Hopefully to get some rest in my busy head and stop thinking about all kind of stuff. I wish you all a very nice weekend and a good start in the new week. Thank you all for your nice and sweet comments on my posts about the exhibition, my mother and the website. It means al lot me that you take the time to write something.

putting in change

I updated my website, you can see all the drawings I made until now. Before you could also see my older work: paintings and pages of my sketchbook. Those links are now gone. I use to show everything I ever made on my site: paintings, drawings, performances and videos and even a big archive of really old works. For the last couple of years I feel that I only want to show the new stuff. I still care a lot about all my work, but I don't feel like showing it anymore. This time it started to itch inside about 3 weeks ago that I just wanted to show these drawings, so now I changed it. If I apply for an exhibition or so, I want to show my new work, because you always think that this is the best you ever made... Maybe it's because of that.

if tention is too low

I finished a new drawing. I'm not sure what she is thinking, she could be shocked by herself that she actually is going to throw that thing, or that she is not trowing it. Maybe she is surprised.

One last picture of the exhibition my drawings where in. All the Pippi's are home again.

play with me

Maybe you remember that I'm a big fan of the work Niki de Saint Phalle, so yesterday me made a little trip to Brühl (Germany) to the Max Ernst Museum. It's the first and only museum worldwide dedicated to the large oeuvre of Max Ernst (1891-1976). It offers a review of his versatile work in a permanent exhibition. And now you can see a retrospective of the work of De Saint Phalle, concentrated on her early works, called "Spiel mit mir" (play with me). It is a small exhibition, they didn't had a lot of her work, mostly drawings, some paintings and assemblages. But it was still nice to see it: how she started to work and still had to find her way.

are they still in control?

Yes, I started another drawing, I hope you're not too bored by my fascination for big drawings and Pippi-girls with weapons. Well, I hope I can finish it this weekend. Wish you all a nice weekend and I hope you have better weather then me: rain, rain and some more rain. But the perfect weather to draw, so...

take it from here

I thought I show you a piece of my "inspiration wall", where I collect newspaper articles, pictures of magazines, sentences that I find interesting and some of my sketches. I like to see this kind of stuff when I'm in a studio of someone. The problem I have with my wall is that I find it difficult to change it, put some of it down and hang something new. I always get so used to it.