IF: Twirl – “Having a ball on Medusa’s head”
Materials used:
watercolor, watercolor pencil, ink, India ink, grahite pencil
—
Finally Medusa’s ready. The layers of colour were a lot of work on this one. Especially since I was working on new paper…one that required a little more TLC than my usual paper. I usually work on Schut paper because it’s nice and smooth and very white. It’s a fair price for watercolor paper, but still expensive when doing a handful of illustrations a day. So, my illustrator friend Ingrid Friesen gave me a block of cheap watercolour paper, bought at an outlet store for books. She said it was good…and it is! But it’s a lot thinner than my regular paper and a little more prone to give off fibres when I draw with pen and ink. But positioning my pen differently helped heaps!
IF: Prepare – The Enormous Crocodile
Is was having a book presentation yesterday, The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl, Illustrated by Quentin Blake…and I caught her, nervously preparing for it. I suddenly realised how fast time flies. It wasn’t that long ago that I did my first book presentation ever. And I remember how nervous I was to do it. And here she was, my own daughter, doing her first book presentation ever! Wow…time sure sometimes feels like an enormous crocodile!
It was such a beautiful sunrise…
It was cold on the bike this morning and with the night frost I was a bit scared that perhaps the cycling lanes were slippery. But fortunately they weren’t. We rode to school in full darkness. But when I rode back home twenty minutes later, I was treated to a marvellous sunrise. The colours so seamlessly gradient from a bleak Cerulean blue to a golden Indian yellow with hues of natural Sienna in between I studied the colours well and there’s just no way of capturing them…I mean REALLY capturing them. Somewhere between the golden yellow and the blue there’s this area of colourlessness. It’s not white, not grey, not blue, not golden…just completely colourless. Air. Impossible to capture that on paper. And then the whitish and greyish streaks of the contrails in the sky…you were never aware of the planes over your head, but they’ve left their beautiful marks. The sky had an almost checkered pattern. And then imagine a couple of geese flying West… So beautiful. And how the contrails disperse…I thought I might catch that with a dry brush and gouache…
Before I knew it I was home. Almost disappointed, for I’d enjoyed the light and the sky so much. Couldn’t help rushing to my studio and doing a journal page about it…
It’s funny though, how I find myself studying the world around me more and more in a sense of labelling everything I see with colour names and brands…”this would be a cerulean blue and that definitely a prussian blue…oh and that would be a Winsor & Newton cerulean blue!” Because, mind you, Winsor & Newton cerulean blue is something totally different than a Horadam cerulean blue! hehehe…see? Totally obsessed by colour labelling!
[Oops! As I type this there's something strange going on in our garden. Our cat was being incredibly annoying this morning, meowing my ears off. She had food, water and I'd even opened the door to let her out. But she kept nagging. So, after about half an hour of incessant whining, I picked her up, opened the front door and put her outside, telling her to go catch a mouse. Well, she just did! Never knew cats listen that well to orders! hehehehe Better go do a good deed right now to make up for the hole in my Karma for the death of this mouse...after all, if I had been more patient this mouse would not have ended up decapitated in the mouth of my cat (oh dear, if the mouse is a female, the mouse wouldn't have babies at this time, would she?)...I know, it's an idea going overboard...but sometimes I wonder about that...what's nature? What is responsibility? Accountability?]
A fun day at the beach, but…
…yesterday was also…
It was a startling and uncomfortable experience, I can tell you. And not even our own dog. Of course not our own dog. He knows he can’t do things like this. But this dog….owwww! I was too baffled to kick him!
New pile of books
Today I went out for lunch with a friend…that was sort of stretched beyond coffee time and before I knew it, I had to hurry to visit some stores for my grocery list before they closed. But then I hurried so hard, that I ended up having half an hour spare time. And what better to do with spare time than visit a book store?
I ended up with three totally different books. I’ll give the English/American versions of them if I can find them online.
I’m starting off with a heart-breaking graphic novel about a man who gets cancer. I frankly don’t know why I put myself through it. I’ve already seen it is gutting. But the way it’s drawn and the economical use of text; it is SOOOO beautiful. I know I’m going to have to read this with a box of tissues on the side and only when my hubs and kids are home so that I have some diversion from feeling blue. But this writer/cartoonist is SOOO indescribably good at portraying drama and evoking feelings from the reader that I couldn’t leave this book behind. I want to know how she does it. Learn from her. And the only way is biting though the story. But the beautiful watercolors in the book and her wonderful style are going to pull me through it, I expect.
It’s quite common in autobiographical comics that the greatest tragedies and threats and suffering possible in a human life features the story. For some reason comic style allows for immediate understanding that cannot be misread. It’s much more direct than literature. And also, comics as a style, because of their simplicity allow for space between the reader and the story. Some true dramas – like war, for instance, or child abuse – can only be visualised in comic form if it needs to be seen by people. Somehow the pictorial way of consuming a story is easier than just text. And even though there are tons of gross movies out there, it is still very hard to film drama that lasts for a long period of time. A movie needs an intro, a climax, a catharsis and peace and quiet. In autobiographic comics it doesn’t work that way. Because life doesn’t work that way. In human life, most dramas don’t end well at all. And somehow the audience doesn’t allow that sort of ending in a movie or even a book. The audience feels robbed of a happily ever after when the end of a movie’s sad. Just think back to your initial response to the movie “7″ in which the final scene reveals the exessive drama and violence of that mad man. That sudden dramatic event at the END of the movie went totally against Hollywood rules. That movie stayed with you too long. I remember that my night out after seeing that wasn’t that much fun at all anymore. But that kind of drama is digestable in a comic for some reason. So, I’m going to be brave, dig up some tissues and cuddle up on the couch with my kids playing around me and go through the drama (althoug I almost wonder why…hehe).
The second book is lighter and brighter although it also contains a dark side. It’s called “Donker” (English: “Dark”) by Maaike Hartjes. It’s about the time she went to South Africa to teach some workshops and how she is confronted withthe issues that country has.
I like Maaike Hartjes’ work very much. Her style is extremely simple and straightforward and therefore very powerful. She doesn’t frantically look to make jokes about everything and dares to be serious and depressed in her work as well. In that sense I feel her work is more genuine than that of many other graphic novellists.
And then, to please my audience…a VERY happy and JOLLY end! I accidentally ran into a Dawn Sokol De Vries book in Dutch!!!
Well, do I personally like this book very much? To be honest, no. I don’t take to books that have these layouts ready for you to fill in at all. The only reason why I buy books like these, is because I want to be up-to-date with available books that touch on art journaling. Because, in a way it’s a rudimentary version of an art journal. This is a good book to have for my students…to show them how they can start if they’ve a little trouble getting started. This is an awesome book for starting art journalers and for those who step up from scrapbooking to art journaling. The pages are inviting and the exercises are very easy to start with. It’s called a doodle book, so no high expectations in the art-direction. And good paper for any sort of medium you’d want to work with. So, even though I’m not going to work in this book myself, professionally, as a teacher I like this book a lot. The only criticism I have on the book, is that it asks its users to purchase quite some art supplies. And if you’re not sure if you’ll continue art journaling, you might want to be a bit careful with that, because many of them don’t come cheap. If you feel tempted to buy a thing or two that’s referred to in the book, try to go to a real art store and buy some single crayons and pencils in your favorite colours. Or else you’re stuck with complete sets you might never use.
So, hopefully having provided you with some inspiration for your reading list and having left you with some sound advice, I’m going to wish you a very happy weekend! Have fun and see you next week!
“Laid ease”
Despite heavy eye lids, and thanks to coffee, I managed to come up with a new set up plan for filming and do a watercolor illustration.
Watercolor, ink, watercolor pencil
Illustration Friday – Grounded
Below the photo is a video.
Graphite pencil
A new art journaling video…
Graphite pencil
