Facebook Page

Well it had to happen at some point..
 I have opened a Facebook Page! https://www.facebook.com/CurlySketches which I'm quite happy about! Not only can I post things, but it is also a good platform to sell small stuff and to reach more people (I do feel that the blog visitors has diminished).

I have made these small Moleskine books a series of the deep sea fish I have made before. 

I really like them! I also enjoyed doing some kind of "series" and I think I will enjoy it more as I have other small books planned. Here you can see them individually. 

I have also made some sketches for some ideas, and as my oil painting classes have finished I switched to acrylic. I hope you enjoyed this post!

A bit of everything again..

I'm so bad at updating recently.. i think my last update was a few months back!?
SORRYYYYY

I just started my own business, and I feel like because it's in the starting phase I can't do anything but work on it haha. I have made some time to draw, but I know I should really plan my drawing time better... although the inspiration also comes on and off.

We had a long weekend vacation and went to Krommenie, some small town north of Amsterdam, where my boyfriend's family lives. I decided to take my pastels, since I haven't worked with them in aaaages! So I decided to make a coloured Tjido, which ended up looking like a fox.. 

I then asked Joost to give me a challenge, and it was a Beaver!!! funny animals.. I did like the sketches though :) I have also re-taken digital painting, though I seriously need to buy a new Tablet.. I think mine is a 10 year old Wacom.. so in free style i came up with this:

Background is lame, but I do like the deer. He's funny :P
And to end this post, I have an update on my oil painting classes! I have missed them for the past 3 weeks, but now i'm in a roll! And I'm quite looking forward to finishing this. I hope to add the whole process which I have been taking pictures of :)

Jee, well if you see this post it does seem I'm doing much hahaha!

A slow comeback

Agian... late...

I hope you haven't given up on me!

So actually I have been a bit slow since we've been back from vacations. Not much inspiration. I guess also a bit busy with a friend visiting and working on a paper we want to get published from my time in Spain. Kind of cool  as well :)

In the cool news, I have accepted a job offer and will be working when I go back to the Netherlands, and its a nice part time job with the same EU project of Spain! :D My boyfriend and I have also decided to get a dog.. yeah i know! Crazy! I know its a big responsability, but I'm really looking forward to it and reading allot. I think it will be good to have a companion and a good reason to go out! Training the dog sounds also like a good challenge of discipline. Plus, Holland is a perfect place to have a dog! With parks, bicycle lanes, beach close by, etc!

This is why this is the first sketch:

It has been hard work to find the right dog for us. But I think it is good to know what you are looking for and study the different races you had in mind. Allot of people get pets without knowing what they are going for (myself being one of those people with Bob the chameleon). Also nowadays you have so much information and people that are patient enough to maintain a blog with their experiences :) really nice! We have contacted different kennels after deciding on 3 races, and now its down to 2! I will keep you posted!

I also wanted to show you the final product of the snorkeling blog :) (i have to apologize for the quality of the pictures). The moleskine paper is interesting with aquarel, quite a thick paper very different to aquarel paper, i guess its very soft. I hope now I'm back on routine I can get more inspiration from other bloggers! Get a project again! 

Ah yes, and the baby card is a success! It is now being printed for a try-out, and well baby will be born soon so we will receive a picture if this happens before we get back :) And of course you'll get to see it!

Oh and next post I will show you the results from the printing session today!

Back to the old black lines ;)

The countdown begins!
Monday we are leaving on vacation!!! We are heading to Akumal and then to Xcalac- a tiny town at the border with Belice. I'm pretty excited about this. We'll be diving and relaxing at the beach!! Sorry if I'm making you jealous!

But anyway, I have decided to make a challenge for myself: one drawing per day! until we get back to Merida... That will be interesting! :P

Last weekend my boyfriend and I celebrated 2 years together :) we were planning on going to get a romantic lunch, visit a museum and then get a beer. But as always, nothing went as planned. The coffee place was closed, we had breakfast at another venue, the tropical storm started and the museum was being used for an event so it was closed for the public as well.. so we ended up drinking beer at an Irish Pub watching the euro cup at 2pm haha. We then went to the city centre to have dinner, but somehow we weren't feeling that great. Back at home we collapsed in bed feeling swollen and took a nap. It wasn't until 11pm or something that we were feeling normal again and watched a series... so yeah a pretty romantic sunday ;)

My other drawing is just some crazy idea I got. After drawing it I guess it has a bit of Alice in Wonderland feeling, so I wrote a quote of the book in her dress. I decided to bring colour onto it, and I guess i'm pleased about the result! I'm also working on a baby-card project, but of course I can't disclose those pictures until baby is born :)

Water colours and sketches

Hello dear friends & readers!

Firstly thank you for the batik tips ;) i have found the wax and a pot to smelt it in. I have done some experiments but still a bit unsure if i should share them haha, a birthday gift went horribly wrong last week :P

But I would like to share my continuation of experimenting with water colours. Actually I'm using chinese ink and water colour pencils. I forgot my water colours you see.. but I think it's working fine. I did this bird and i hope you can give me some tips or suggestions.

On my more comfortable zone of drawing I had this urge to draw Kukulkan or Quetzalcoatl, well a god found in most Mexican pre hispanic cultures. Its a feathered snake, which I think is totally cool. The heads you tend to find are like the one I sketched, and well the little guy is the personification or warrior. In Maya they believed you were born with an animal protector (like horoscope) and of course emperors were normally if not always Jaguars or Eagles, so they had to look the part and they would deform their bodies in order to appear like the animal. Hence the idea.

Next (yeah sorry for the whole legend talks) just a portrait of my boyfriend. Trying to get a grip in the skill of faces, his neck was too long and i think i should do this more often to  train it.

Toh Bird

Hello dear visitors!

First of all, THANK YOU to all your kind comments on last post. It has motivated me to keep on working on the new journal! :)
I seriously think that Blogger should have an easier way to reply to comments. I also notice that if you get a reply you never know.. you have to go back to check it. Or is it just me?

But anyway, today I just have one drawing I want to show you, still part of the old sketchbook (don't want to leave it 1/4 blank) and it's a typical bird from this Maya region and they call it Toh. Its quite beautiful bird, and I was lucky enough to see it casually at some forest ruins.

And now I also want to you some small hand craft proyect I decided to take upon myself. I really want to learn to do Batik, but since its been hard to find the wax i decided to first just play around with some materials and see what I could come up with. I made a small foto series to show you the process. The end product is a funny bean bag, i guess to decorate you table or umm to stop papers flowing away on a windy day... hahaha yeah still have to decide its use.

NEW JOURNAL!

Thanks to the encouraging comments on last post, i decided to pull up my trousers and begin my new sketch journal!

So here i present to you my 1st Moleskine journal! I still have to finish my recycled paper one, but I think i'll be working happily on both.

OK so i know the foto is not very sharp, but it is still a WIP ;) I decided to decorate it with the two countries I feel most at home and where I've been traveling back and forth for almost my whole life.
Since sometimes I do get a drawing block, i decided to use the EDM list of drawings! So in every 8-10 pages i decided to put a challenge:

Next the first 2 skecthes! Yay!

Many journals i have seen have inspired me allot and since I love food I decided to follow the food-journals for now. I might want to add some real stories on my pictures, but i just don't know if my handwritting would ruin everything.. well that's just me rambling about. 

Lets move on! The first drawing is of my breakfast at my local market here in Merida :) and the second one was made at my favourite lunch place: Cafe Creme (calle 41) its just amazing place! The owner is a very nice french man called Eric and he makes the most delicious salads! (its strange how with so many vegetables and ingredients, you can never find decent salads in Mexico)

Below are the coloured versions. I used water colours and maybe for the quiche drawing i will add some more things. That's what happens with colours.. suddendly white is really WHITE haha. I don't know if colour is my thing, but i guess it does give more life to these food entries ;)

Trying to get inspiration

Hello hello!

Today I'm not totally thrilled with my drawings. I thought I would be doing much more, but there seems to be so many different things going on. Even if I do stay a whole day at home.

So the first part of this post is to show you a working in progress of a project for my friend Star who asked me to design a tree which its branches form birds... quite a challenge, since I'm not that good with trees or birds hahaha! So here is my first sketch, of course, its just a study to see where I'm heading to.

Next i my favourite of last week, I did it while enjoying the breeze at the English Language Library here in Merida. Apparently the house we're living in does not have the best positioning (East to West instead of North to South) and that's why even the garden is quite warm. We have a Nopal, or cactus, in teh garden between all the tropical plants. So I decided to use my old characters of other drawings- owl kid and wild cat kid- The detail on the nopal leaves was quite time consuming as well, hence why it took long to update.

Finally, one day I did go outside to draw and cover myself in sweat. I did some plants but didn't like them, so I turned the page and started a face. This is a bit of the result.
I have found art classes, but I haven't really decided if I want to go because I might be working with a ecotourism project at the local university.. I feel I have to take a quick decision but then I try to relax and think that we've been here just for 2 weeks and not everything has to be resolved.

And umm yeah, still working on the old sketch book.. haven't found the courage to start a the new one with fears it will be ruined haha. But I know I should get over it!

Thank you guys for commenting! I hope you enjoy the drawings!