I ♥ My Mommy

Many were the times when I returned home with scratched knees and other childhood 'injuries' that only a kiss from my mommy could fix. And there's still no one who can comfort me like my mother does when I get a boo boo, although they tend to be more of the emotional kind these days. (I rarely fall down anymore ;))

This piece is the counter part of my I ♥ My Daddy illustration from a few posts back.

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 :)

I ♥ my daddy

Yup, I sure do :)

Over here in my part of the world, father's day is coming up. Like everything in Belgium, we like to keep things complicated and diverse. So while the greater part of the country celebrates father's day in June, the Antwerp area celebrates father's day on the the 19th of March. Antwerp chose that day, way back when, because that date marks the feast of Saint Joseph, one of the more famous dads in history ;) While the rest of the country quickly adopted the June date which is held as father's day by most of the world I think, the greater Antwerp area stuck to their guns and are still honouring their fathers in March. So will I :D

Remember how nice it was to fall asleep on your dad's capable arm when you were little? Ah, sweet bliss.

Pan Am

I'm a self confessed TV show addict, and there's always room for just one more on my list. I started watching Pan Am recently. I'm loving it so far! Quick sketch in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Twirl

It's fun to twirl your hair, it's one of the most girly things to do I think. I have curly hair and I often find my fingers have subconsciously entagled themselves between my locks. I'm pretty sure all this messing about can't be all too healthy for my tresses but I can't help it, it's just so damn fun!

So is drawing lots of lucious hair. This one's all about the coiffure :)

Make way for the queen

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

DAAN

I'm an auntie again!
My younger sister just had her second child Tuesday and naturally I was very happy and proud to design the birth anouncement cards. Both baby, mommy and proud daddy are doing fine. The little bundle of joy is just as cute as a button and auntie Cilla just can't wait to start spoiling him like I do my little niece already (seriously, she has me wrapped around her little two year-old finger ;)) who I'm sure is going to be one kick-ass big sister.

Hibernate

We've been having a bit of an indian summer here in Belgium this past week, so autumn hasn't really arrived in earnest yet (no complaints here! :)) But when it does, I often go in a sort of hibernation myself and can often be found in a similar position as in this drawing. My much beloved bed becomes a comfortable little nest from which I watch some tv, check some e-mails, do some drawing or read a book. I have been known to draw the covers up so high that I'm barely visible underneath the wealth of fabric :D

Ferocious

I bought some markers the other day. I'd never ever worked with them before so I bought just a select few and decided this weeks Illustration Friday prompt would be the ideal occasion to try them out. Conclusion: I like markers, they're fun new playthings BUT I seriously need to buy me some appropriate paper! The paper I did this on was not quite resistent and started to crease and then do all sorts of fugly things and so the drawing did not exactly turn out the way I wanted it too.

Since "ferocious" brings seventies-type girls with huge afro-hair to mind for me, I decided to stick with the theme and went on to heavily photoshop this piece in an attempt to make it 'groovy' again. All in all not an overwhelming succes, this one, but I'm not displeased with it either. They can't all be winners, right? ;)

Suggestions for kinds of paper that work really well with markers are more than welcome!

Remedy

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau

PS : No sketches of the day yet this week. Work has been really busy and promises to stay that way untill Friday. I haven't been able to spare twenty minutes a day so far. Hoping to pick it up again next week.

Midsummer Night

I love summer, and I love summer nights. Or rather, nightfall. I love going outside to sketch or read a book. I like to find a quiet spot and immerse myself into the story. And then sometimes, when both the weather and the story are so fine that I seem to be in a space out of time, I lift my head and find that suddenly the stars have already come out and dusk is settling in. I adore those moments.

Some of my favourite stories are those of Shakespeare, and I've been reading them ever since my early teens. It greatly increased my love for both storytelling and the English language. And so all of these elements found their way into this little piece.

The eye of man hath not heard,
The ear of man hath not seen,
Man's hand is not able to taste,
His tongue to conceive,
Nor his heart to report,
What my dream was.

William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream

Launch

Between starting a new job (yay!) and going through a bit of a rough patch health-wise (boo!) blogging can quickly take a bit of a back seat. Hence the lack of posts this past month. Time flies when "real-life" decides to take over.

So on to the trusted Illustration Friday prompts to get things started up again. I'm officially (making an attempt at) re-launching. :D

Bicycle

When I first read this week's prompt for Illustration Friday ('bicycle') my initial reaction was : Thanks, but no thanks. There are few things I am worse at than at drawing bicycles. I find them extremely difficult to get right. So I thought I'd let this one pass me by. But then I started looking through the entries that were already posted, got inspired, and decided to give it a go after all. I guess that's what IF is all about, right?

This is watercolours, coloured and graphite pencil, then scanned, and the final patern in the background was made and inserted with Photoshop. I made a little slideshow of the whole process. Thought it might be fun to let you see the different stages.

Oh, and although the bike is far from perfect (I think I got about three different perspectives going on in there if you look closely :)), this is by far the best bicycle I have ever drawn.

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!

Duet

I've had this one finished for about a week or two and have been holding out for a prompt on Illustration Friday that would fit. I guess 'Duet' could work, there are two characters after all :)

Now, I'm not glorifying TV or anything, and I'm certainly not saying kids should watch it more. But what I was going for here are very fond memories I have of watching certain movies for the first time. For the longest time it seems, I had to go to bed anytime anything remotely cool seemed to be on. But at a certain point I was deemed old enough to see what all the fuss was about. The first time I saw an Indiana Jones film, the Star wars trilogy, a James Bond flick, you name it! A whole new world was suddenly available to me. Without exception, every single one of these was watched together with my dad (my mom's not that big on fantasy/action movies :)) who seemed to guide me through this jungle of Hollywood classics.

I drew the kid character as a boy instead of a girl because I tend to draw mostly female characters (I guess it comes from being one myself :)). So I decided on an all male piece.

Be sure to click this one to see the bigger size, the thumbnail really doesn't show that much.

The Big Champagne Tournament

Poster I made for a billiards tournament down where I live. It's a specific kind of billards called "toppenbiljart" in Dutch (10 points to whoever can find me the proper English translation because I can't seem to find it myself :D)

UPDATE: 10 points go to my brother who figured out it is called Bumper billiards

They dubbed it "the big champagne tournament" because there's a free glass of champagne for every competitor and the winner gets (amongst other things) a whole bottle of it .

Animation Barbie

Now with lifelike bloodshot eyes from too much staring at a computer screen/lightbox! Comes with extra gadgets such as: the lightbox (for short time only with EXTRA pegbar!), camera + stand, laptop, headphones, one big coffee can to get her through those all-nighters as the deadline approaches, sketchpad and her trusty col-erase pencils!


Well, I would have bought her had she excisted... :)

I never was a huge Barbie-lover. I had a few but only played with them sporadicly. So why on earth my mind jumped to this when hearing this week's Illustration Friday prompt "Toy" is just one of those quirky things we'll call 'inspiration'.

Cultivate

My favourite part of summer is the herb garden and the wonderful smells that it brings with it. I'm not a big gardener but I just about manage to keep herbs alive :)

This was a pencil sketch, then completed and coloured in trusty Photoshop. I'm a big fan of textures but I sometimes think I use them too gratuitously and over-work some of my pieces as a result. I consciencely stayed away from them here to get another look and feel for a change. I'm pretty happy with it.

Stir

Like many a young kid, I loved to help my mom stir batter for whatever she was baking. I would stand on a chair so I could reach the countertop, wear one of my mom's aprons and my self-made chef's hat that I had made out of an old bread bag.

You have no idea what I mean when I say "self-made hat out of bread bag", you say? No problem, here's a picture of the real deal! It's mini-me, helping my aunt stirring what I assume was pancake batter.

Warning

This week in my quest to explore different techniques: collage. You might not see it that clearly on the scan version you see here, but the elements were all cut out individually out of paper.

Furthermore, this is actually a pretty accurate representation of me when I've just gotten out of bed. Yes, my hair does tend to do that wildly out of control thing in the morning. :)