Bear

Grrrowl! :)

You can come to my party!

I made a book!

My little niece turned four recently, and I try to make her something unique every year on her birthday as a special gift. I worked on this for some months, and the hardest part was coming up with a good, simple story. I really wanted it to be all about her on her special day, you see. The pieces all fell into place when she hit her Disney princess phase. Hard. She already had some princesses merchandise before but she's just now getting to the age where she's starting to see the actual movies for the first time. She's been on a Snowwhite kick for months now, and recently I let her pick a movie to borrow from my Disney dvd cupboard (which she treated like the Holy Grail it is, bless her) and she picked The Aristocats (my sister nearly had a heart attack when she then later announced auntie Cilla had let her 'bring kitties home' :p)

I can relate to being under the Disney magic spell, having never truly outgrown my princess phase myself ;) And so the idea for the story came easier after that. It's about her fantasizing about getting to be a princess for the day, and all the fun things she would get to do with the Disney princesses. Because it's her birthday, she gets a crown, making her a true princess for the day and so her wish comes true. The title comes from what has become her favourite catchphrase. For the entire year now she's been inviting people to her birthday party, and uninviting us again when things don't go quite her way, and then inviting us again, and so on, and on, and on... :)

Here are a few pages, and some pictures of the finished book. I'm rather proud of this project and I might attempt one again in the future. Something that doesn't involve copyrighted material so it could possibly be pitched to a publisher? Who knows :) Needless to say the princesses are, off course, copyright Disney.

 

ImageZoo

A while back I did some illustrations for ImageZoo, a site that offers royalty free stock illustrations, rights managed and custom illustrations.

I did a series of illustrations featuring children, something I always love doing (as evidenced [here] an [here] for example). Here are some of my own favourites.

You can find me on ImageZoo by clicking [here] or on the icon in the sidebar!

Newlyweds

I made this as a card congratulating a couple of newlyweds. I had fun designing something with a clear edged line. I hadn't done an illustrations with that thick black outline for ages, but playing with line thickness can make for a dynamic drawing. Might do some more of it every now and then, just to shake things up :)

Make way for the queen

I ♥ Halloween! And I ♥ Tudor history. So there you have it :)
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE !!!

The Death March

Every year in August Bornem (the little town where I live in Belgium) is overrun by thousands of people from all over the world coming to compete in "The Death March". It's a 100 km long trek (I think that's about 62 miles for those of you who are wondering), starting at 9 pm on a Friday, giving the contestants 24 hours and the entire night to complete the course. It's not a race, the objective is not to get in first, getting over the finish line in itself is quite an acomplishment. Every contestant who crosses said finish line gets a diploma to commemorate the ordeal. The organisation of the march figured that they wanted a new design for the diplomas and organised a competition.

I decided that this year I would try my hand at both the design competition as the Death March itself. My design didn't make it, now let's hope that on August 12th I do. :)

Happy Birthday Lenn

My niece turned 2 yesterday! And we had a wonderful garden party today to celebrate it. The day started of a little clouded but in the afternoon there was sunshine galore, woohoo!! I wanted to give her something special and after seeing this entry on one of the illustration friday prompts a few weeks back I just knew I hade to do the same: custom made puzzle blocks!



I found this wooden box at the art supplies store and it turned out to be the perfect fit! Painted and decorated it, then gave it a coat of varnish. Now for the actual puzzle. I couldn't find the right size blocks at the art supplies store, so I payed a visit to the hardware store instead. Bought a square wooden beam and had them cut it up into cubes (the clerck's face was hilarious "you want me to cut up this whole thing into tiny blocks ?!" When I told him what it was for though he thought it was really cool and totally got on board with the master plan).



Gave them a thorough sand down and they were ready to go. I went for stickers instead of painting them. I guess stickers wont last as long but I wanted quite detailed images on there (I incorporated her birth announcement card and such), so stickers seemed to be the more practical option in that regard. We'll see how long they last, otherwise I will just have to make some more next year I guess!

She got a truck-load of presents today. There were just far too much goodies there for her to be able to concentrate on a small box of wooden blocks. But I'm sure she liked it! :)

Happy Easter

We've been having some truly delightful weather these past few days. We're hitting 26-27 degrees (Celcius) easily. That's not just unusual for this time of year, in Belgium, that's pretty unusal period. So it's been entirely too nice outside to stay in and draw. I tried drawing outside, but I've been too lazy even for that :) I just sit and enjoy.

So here's a real quicky for you. Have a nice Easter weekend everyone!